You might try this to keep them stunted...I did this last year and accidently stunted mine. I put them in clay pots and had them in the shade and they never got more than a foot tall, then when I saw they were not growing well, I put them in the ground. These things took off and were almost 20 feet long. They overtook my satellite dish that is on top of my garden shed so bad that I had to go cut them back away from it. The pic below is in September, by the end of the season they were half way to the house on the satellite line! The blooms are beautiful though. Here they are in October...this only two plants.

So you're the sad lawn poster child :-( The good news is that you're doing everything I was doing when I first came to this forum in 2002, everything, so there's hope for you. You're on your way with shampoo. Your moisture penetration will improve greatly. You'll feel it underfoot after it rains. You should never have to reseed with KBG. It spreads by itself to fill thin areas. Could it be your trees have grown up to provide too much shade for KBG? It needs a good bit of sunlight every day. Chances are you don't have clay, but we don't get many people from Denver on this forum. Maybe there is clay there. There are two ways to check that. One is the bottle test. Get a bottle with straight sides and fill it half full of soil. Take a picture with a ruler next to the jar. Then fill the jar with water and a drop or two of shampoo or dish soap. Shake the jar until the soil is completely incorporated in the slurry. Set it down and wait 2 minutes. Take a picture with the ruler at 2 minutes, 2 hours, and 2 days. Sand and gravel will settle instantly. At 2 minutes you'll have an idea of sand, gravel, and silt. Loam will settle in 2 hours. The really fine particles will settle in 2 days. If you can see through the water after 2 days then you likely have no clay at all. Clay tends to remain suspended in the water for many days. The other way to check for clay is to have your soil tested at an excellent lab like Logan Labs. You've probably read some of those soil test posts here. Clay soils will have an exchange capacity up above 15. Having gone through all that, if you have an imbalance of salts (sodium, potassium, magnesium, and calcium) then the soil can act just like clay in almost every respect. But this can be fixed by rebalancing the salts. The good soil tests will give you that information and morpheuspa (a member of this forum) can help you get the right stuff added. I don't know what will happen to your water bill, but you are not watering right. Get some cat food or tuna cans and place them around the yard. Turn on your sprinklers and time how long it takes to fill the cans. That will become your watering time from now on. What changes is how frequently you water. The basic rules are that you deep water once per month when temps are below 70 degrees F. Water once every 3 weeks with temps in the 70s. Water once every 2 weeks with temps in the 80s. Water once a week with temps in the 90s. The reason this works is you are deep watering every time. When water is deeper in the soil where the temps are cooler, the water evaporates more slowly giving the roots longer to absorb moisture. This also forces the roots to grow down deeper giving you better drought resistance. Going hand in hand with watering properly is mowing properly. You should be mowing KBG or fescue at the mower's highest setting. Tall grass grows deeper roots and provides more shade on the soil helping to keep it cool. Organic fertilizers are made from animal feeds, so I like to go direct to the feed store and get it at "wholesale." Seriously you save about 5/6 the cost of organic ferts by buying 50-pound bags of soybean meal, cottonseed meal, alfalfa pellets (rabbit chow), corn meal, or corn gluten meal. Call your feed stores and see what they have and get prices. The application rate is 15-20 pounds per 1,000 square feet. Milorganite is fine if that's all you can find. That concoction of stuff you read about is, surprisingly, not all that bad. The guy who made that popular is Jerry Baker, "America's Master Gardener." Back when he was on TV everyone on these forums just laughed about his recipes. Now, however, with some more thought, there's really nothing wrong with those. You'll get better results from 15 pounds of alfalfa pellets, though. The same goes for compost. You'll get much better bang for your buck with organic fertilizer. If you want to fertilize, use fertilizer. If you want to kill weeds, spot spray with something like Weed b Gon or Weed b Gon Chickweed, Clover, and Oxalis Killer. Those won't kill grassy weeds. For those you'll need to identify them and get more specific help. Post pictures here and ask for help. Speaking of pictures, if you could post one that shows your shade situation that would help. You might be able to loosen the extra soil and get it out. Try loosening it with a rake and water washing to move it around or get it more level. Leveling is a different topic. You might search this forum for more info on leveling. That will give you more questions to ask. So essentially lawn care boils down to watering properly, mowing properly, and fertilizing. Those are in order of importance, by the way. If you're not watering properly, then the fertilizer choice is immaterial. Here are some motivational pictures. The first one shows the fertilizer effect of alfalfa pellets.Thanks to mrmumbles for this picture. The alfalfa pellets were applied in mid May. The picture was taken in mid July. You can clearly see the improved color, density, and growth. This next picture is morpheuspa's lawn. These lawns are all KBG in eastern PA. The big difference is that morph's is watered deeply once a week in the summer and he's mostly organic with fertilizer. This was taken in July several years ago. His neighbors water every day.

since those look like dixie cups, you could go up to the 'solo' cup size. put holes in the bottom of the cup for drainage. I double cup mine, with holes in the bottom of the inner cup. I use gritty mix - a mixture of napa floor dry (part no. 8822) and no.2 cherrystone, or chicken grit. I also throw just a tiny handful of soil in the mix. After a rain, I just drain the outer cup. They look quite nice for here in the upper midwest!

Got to let them callous. At least a few days but not in heat or sun. Plant up and don't water them. Planting mix a little moist is good. If you plant them up right away, you encourage rot. Rooting power helps but not needed. Question; Why did you divided them up? They seem to grow so much better in groups. Only reason I do it because I give them out to friends. Cinnamon is said to prevent rot but I never seen any thing good about it. Rooting power has anti fungul in it for helping roots to form. They look healthy and I don't think you need anything added. Thanks robinswfl, but not as good as so many here who taught me. We all learn from each other here.