First, let me give you a run down on the major cool season grasses, and their pro's and cons. Perennial Ryegrass: A fine bladed, dark green bunch type grass. Germinates in 3-7 days, and is ready for it's first mowing in 3-4 weeks. Can tolerate close mowing (used on golf course fairways) but does well at 2-3 inches. PR is often part of mixes due to its quick germination, but in actuality isn't really good in a mixed stand due to it's fast rate of growth, it's better in a monostand. PR doesn't spread (except for a few new spreading cultivars that just came out) so any stand loss will necessitate periodic overseedings. Once established it is very difficult to seed other types of grass other than PR into the stand due to allelopathy. PR requires full sun, and is somewhat of a thirsty grass, requiring more water than the other major cool season grasses. PR has a very short dormancy period in times of drought, and the grass will die very soon. PR also can suffer cold kill, which occurs when winter temps get very low for long periods. Tall fescue: TF used to be a light green, coarse pasture grass until turf scientists in the late seventies and eighties started developing darker, finer varieties. Development has continued to this day and the newest varieties are dark green, fairly fine bladed, and much softer. Germination is typically 5-12 days, with the first mow at about a month. Also a bunch type grass, but newer varieties have high tillering and higher rhizome activity. Mature tall fescue will spread, albeit slowly, but for the first few years it's spreading is minimal. Any major stand loss will require overseeding. Tall fescue is best around 2-3.5 inches, depending on your preference. Too high it gets bunchy and thin. TF is very shade tolerant, most cultivars do well in sun and moderate shade. Tall fescue has the ability to develop very deep roots in certain soils, and can withstand periods of drought for a long time once mature. Dormancy is longer than PR, but periods of drought will ultimate lead to stand loss. One of the biggest drawbacks to TF is the disease brown patch, but in Colorado this will probably be minimal due to the lower night temps and drier air. Cold kill is also a possibility, but from what I have read cold kill isn't a huge problem unless temps are very low for long periods. TF mixes pretty well with Kentucky bluegrass, as long as you don't select super dark, slow growing cultivars. Kentucky Bluegrass: The Cadillac of turfgrass. Produces a soft lush turf with most cultivars dark green to dark blue green. Spreads via rhizomes, so overseeding is only necessary if very large areas are lost. Germinates in 8-28 days, and is usually slow to establish, first mowing in about 30-45 days depending on the weather, cultivar, soil, etc. The first year it is a bit fragile, but after that it is very durable. There are many different cultivars on the market today with variable characteristics. Usually cut at 2-3 inches, but some varieties can be cut to fairway heights. Mature grass can go dormant in times of drought for long periods, coming out of it when conditions are more favorable. It's spreading ability is one of it's best characteristics as it self repairs areas as big as a dinner plate in one season if properly cared for and feed well. Needs a bit more fertilizer and water than TF, but in reality, to have a great lawn they all require similar inputs. Cold kill isn't an issue, but many cultivars are slow to wake up in spring. It has been the convention to mix different cultivars to increase genetic diversity, and prevent a disease from wiping out an entire lawn. The newer cultivars today are thought to be disease tolerant enough where mixing several cultivars isn't really necessary anymore, which will give a more consistent lawn. Fine fescues are another type of turfgrass, but unless you have moderate to heavy shade, they are typically not suited for full lawns. Their needle like blades are soft, but they are not the greatest looking lawns, and I would only use them in the shady lawns I mentioned above. For a sunny lawn in Colorado you are going to have to irrigate due to your low humidity, and somewhat dry conditions. If water is too expensive to supply 1 inch a week in times of no rain, then PR, TF, and KBG are going to struggle. Fortunately disease pressure should be lower than areas that are hot and humid in the summer. All turfgrasses have their disease issues, with good cultural practices they should be kept to a minimum. To help you decide which cultivar you should use, you can consult the NTEP trials at www.ntep.org. Pay attention to your specific region and characteristics you are interested in. Not all cultivars are tested in the NTEP's since it is a 5 year trial, and new ones that come out mid trial aren't tested. That being said, if a cultivar is being sold, it has been tested by the grower for many years, or else they wouldn't bring it to market. For Colorado, if you choose KBG, I would probably pay attention to spring green up since you have a shorter growing season with lower spring temps. There are a few cultivars that do very well in that regard like Rush, Nugget, 4-Seasons, Jumpstart, and others. Also pay attention to what sod farms in the area are growing as well as local golf courses. Extension offices can be a good resource, but not always, especially when it comes to cultivar selection. Hope this helps.

Absolutely keep watering. Fescue seed is very well characterized. It will not germinate until the second week, so next week you will start to see new seedlings. Then by Saturday you should really see it come in. By the 3rd week it should be up at 80% of germination. I strongly disagree with repeated top dressing of a homeowner lawn. Here is a picture of a yard where they topdressed 1/4-inch every year...for 40 years. You can see where it is piled up about a foot against the stop sign, and they had to install landscape edging to keep the soil from flowing onto the sidewalk. Adding new soil increases the chances of bringing in weed seeds and adds nothing of benefit to a healthy soil. If you really want to top dress with something, use 100% compost with no sand or top soil in the mix. Here is a picture of a yard that has never top dressed with any sand or top soil. This is what it should look like. Of course the types of grass are different allowing one to be mowed at 3/4-inch while the other is mowed at 4 inches, but the lack of mounding is pretty clear in the second one. If you want to save yourself some time and money, don't use compost either. The idea of compost was the mainstay of organic gardening during the Rodale period from the late 1920s through the 1990s. In the 1990s it was discovered that the reason soils were either healthy or unhealthy had to do with the near 100,000 different species of microbes living in the soil. Before that it was believed that there definitely a dozen different species which can be grown on a Petri dish and there may be as many as 50, which for some reason were not able to survive in a laboratory. But DNA testing proved there are more like 100,000 species. We are not in the transition stage from Rodale to what I believe could become known as the Ingham stage for Dr Elaine Ingham. What we know now is that simply feeding the microbes already living in the soil is plenty. When the microbes at the very surface are well fed, the microbes living in the soil below feed off of the waste products of the surface microbes as well as the dead surface microbes themselves. Those well fed subsurface microbes produce plant food in response to the plants' excretion of sugars from roots. This biological process will eventually be taught in schools, but for now it is considered "miraculous." If you want to read more about it, please click here. Get comfortable because there are at least 50 pages including the images. You can feed your soil microbes by scattering organic fertilizer or, as many of us are doing, livestock feed. If you look at the ingredients of organic fertilizer and livestock feed, you'll see the same list of materials including soybean meal, alfalfa, corn, wheat, cottonseed, flax, and other feed stuffs. Look at the label of any dry dog or cat food - same ingredients. These provide basis food to soil microbes. Food means protein, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, and enzymes. The difference between these materials and compost is compost is the result if you allow these food materials to decompose. Whereas if you apply them directly to the soil, you get the full benefit of the food immediately (well, 3 weeks later) in the form of green grass. Mother Nature has been feeding Her plants like this for billions of years. It took us until the late 1990s to figure it out and a few more years to develop a simple plan to try and duplicate what She does. Now here is a picture of a test of alfalfa pellets used as the only fertilizer on a zoysia lawn. This picture was posted here by mrmumbles in June of 2011. The fertilizer was applied in mid May. You can see the improved color, density, and growth. I use this picture often to demonstrate that these ground grains are real fertilizers and not gimmicks. If you try this test this time of year your results will vary considerably from mrmumbles post-springtime test. Soil temps are dropping now which reduces the activity level of the microbes; however, the microbes still need food for the winter. Just don't expect to see such a miracle in your lawn right now. For many of these same reasons, I don't like core aerating either. Bringing up the cores resurfaces old weed seeds for germination. It also does not allow as much air in as you think. I used to have the math on this handy, but we've pretty much stopped talking about it. In essence, the cores allow a certain amount of oxygen to the soil. But when you have hundreds of miles of healthy but microscopic fungal hyphae opening up the pores in the soil, the benefits are much more real and even noticeable in the soil. You get these results with microbe food (the grains listed above) and with proper watering - not with core aerating. Sorry for the lecture but I really don't like the idea of top dressing with anything unless it has protein in it. Anyway I believe your seed will be fine. What you have lost is the opportunity to reseed if this does not come in or if it comes in thin. Next year, get started renovating in August.

It is too cold in zones 5-7. The controlling factor is the nighttime temperature. It needs to be at least 45 degress; 55 degrees is better. If you decide to set them out anyway, use a pot, can, or other cover to protect them during the nights and any cold days. May 15 or later is better for your zone.

They should germinate when sunlight, moisture and soil temperature combine to trigger germination as long as they haven't been eaten by critters, blown away by wind or washed away by heavy rain. I grow perennials from seed via winter sowing to protect them from predators and bad weather. There is a winter sowing forum here on GardenWeb where you can find out more about the method. This is my container ghetto: These are a few of my 2011 sprouts: