Waterman One of the best things you can do for your lawn at this time is just plain top dress with some good top soil. Spread it thinly so as not to smother your grass. There are many benefits to top dressing but most people don't seem to bother. Good soil top dressing gets all the little critters going to work for the benefit of your lawn. Don't even think of rakeing up the cores, they do the same thing. If it were me I would lightly reseed also. I know all the dumb arguements about reseeding in the spring and they are just that. Dumb Mix some seed in with the dirt and some of it will fall in the holes and with some moisture it will germinate. I reseed every season in the year and also aerate. Try it a couple times, your going to like it. Lawndivot

I use a small aquarium pump with a flexi hose. The "foam" that forms is a sign that the population is building, and yes, dying as well. The proper amounts of N and a simple carb such as honey or molasses is needed to build the herd. I have not found that spraying on the plants is near as beneficial as adding to clean water , diluting as it is, and adding a bit more carb and N such as in fish ferts prior to pouring into container plants or soil. Side by side tests on every species of plant I have grown shows massive differences. The development of microrhyzae (sp?) on harvested roots at end of year is complex and complete. The ability to use a "hotter" organic soil mix and therefor, boost your plants size, health, and yields are evident as well. The plants that have the tea added a couple of times during the season also show less stress, more resistance to insects and leaf infections, molds, etc. I don't have a degree, havent read all the papers published by others, but did hundreds of side by side tests with different teas over the years to determine what works best. How about a 5' tall and square habanero grown in a single season that produces hundreds of savina peppers, in a 6 gallon container? Or the plum tomato plant grown in a 4 gallon container that covered 25' of fence again in a single season, never mind me trying to even guess how many plum maters I got off that one, suffice to say that 40 people at work finally begged off because they simply couldn't eat or store more.. heheheh Good luck TiMo

@Toxc: I've certainly had a time or two when I've decided to bag/compost some because the amounts were prodigious - but more often than not it turned out the stuff I left behind decomposed on its own pretty well. (I 'experiment' by doing it differently when I feel like it or got tired of bagging or still had beer in the fridge). I very much like your point above that it depends on the lawn and its health - if it's thick and lush and well-established in good soil, taking a few bags out for other purposes once in a while when cutting the lawn is probably not going to affect it much. Going back to the original poster's question, along the same lines, it may also depend on areas of the lawn. I wouldn't say I am systematic about it, but I try to 'return' more organic material (like grass clippings) in areas of the lawn that are thinner or dry or whatever - and 'borrow' from those that crank no matter what the conditions. I have a patch or two that tend to get dry and thin, and some areas around trees - they get extra compost and clippings and mulch, and the well-fed bits of thick lawn get nothing and contribute to some of the others. Can't tell if any of this helps of course but it keeps me out of trouble.

I started making and using compost tea about two months ago after a wonderful Texas lady named Janet told me about it. She has a lot more space than I do and brews without aeration and has a bucke for each row of her garden. I have only two buckets worth of space so I did more research. Searching on Compost Tea will give you many links and everyone of them are different. I stuck with the ones not trying to sell me anything. My compost tea made my plants grow faster, transplant better, and now I hope also to produce better! I do not have a compost pile ready to use so I buy a bag of compost instead. I put a small coffee can of compost into cheese cloth and tie or rubberband it together to make a tea bag. I fill a five gallon bucket with water (not all the way to the top or it will spill over) then I drop a fish pond pump with a one inch hose connected to it in the bottom and let it bubble for 24 hours. This is supposed to help remove chlorine and other chemicals from the tap water-same principal you use to refill an aquarium! At the end of the 24 hours I dump my compost tea bag into the water, add about 1/4 cup of molasses ( all I can find here is liquid at grocery store, make sure it is unsulphered) If you have dry molasses ad a handful or so. Let it bubble for another 24 hours. Find something to drain the tea bag with, I use a flat from Lowes that plants came in sitting across the top of the bucket and I let it drip as much as it will. When done, I turn off the pump and use one of those battery operated sprayers made to replace the caps on things like bug spray, and I spray away until it is gone. Note I did have to tie cloth around the sprayer end that sits in the water because it gets clogged even when using the teabag. You can add other things as your plants need before spraying such as fish emulsion, kelp, seaweed, corn meal (whatever your plant needs)or add them at the beginning of the brew, you can even add miricle grow. I spray both the foliage and water the soil with it. The addition of molasses seems to have chased off a nasty colony of huge black ants I had building a city in my back yard and making my weeping willow into a nursery! Oh and after you untie your compost tea bag, use whats in there to mulch with or throw it in your compost pile. There is also a company that makes reuseable mesh bags for this that I think were about $5 each. I may buy some later but for now with drought and no work, I will stick with an old tshirt or cheesecloth! If you would like to see how my garden grows here in Villa Rica GA, it is out of control, and I have never had this kind of growth in any kind of garden, check out my myspace page...look for pics, albumns, garden albumn and then the tomato plants, you can also see my friends garden and we started seed at the same time and put plants into the garden at same time. His are disturbingly samll and need some attention while mine are overgrown and lush and beautiful! I definitely recomend compost tea! http://www.myspace.com/kelleyville Here is a link that might be useful: Kelleyvilles's myspace page for garden pics!