Cool season grasses need soil temps above 50 degrees to germinate (air temps don't determine germination directly, but obviously they affect soil temps). 55 degrees would be better. Crab grass germinates when soil temps are 60 degrees and above for one week. If you are going to seed this spring (late summer/early fall would be much better) then the only preemergent safe to use would be Tupersan(siduron). Putting Tupersan down now wouldn't hurt, but it's probably a bit early in NJ. It's only effective for 4-6 weeks, so multiple applications will be required this spring/summer to be protected until fall. Any other preemergents will inhibit your turfgrass from germinating.

I have read several other similar threads about recovering a lawn and decided to start my own instead of hijack somebody else's. Thank you in advance for patience repeating some answers. Sorry for the book but I wanted to include all the details. My lawn is a unique situation. I purchased a neglected and foreclosed home December 2012 in New Hampshire. It sat vacant all of 2012 at the least and possibly before. The yard was peppered with trash and objects as well as had little makeshift garden boxes, inflatable pools, trampolines etc killing localized sections of the lawn. The lawn had gone to a hay field for at least 2012's season. Spring 2013 I cleared all of the lawn of the objects etc. I painstakingly mulched up the matted down hay left over with my lawn tractor. I didn't really rake or bag it but I did side discharge it all the way to the woods. I reseeded bald spots and hoped for the best. I winter fertilized october of 2013. In the spring it greened up nice early. I put down weed and feed sometime in the mid spring when broadleaf was starting to pop up. It did a fair job of fighting the stuff back. I water it Monday, Wednesday and Friday for 20 minutes from my Hunter irrigation system. I have well water and it is high in iron. I mow an inch at a time roughly with my mulching tractor set at 5 out of 6. I think it is around 3.5" grass when done. My back yard which is a bit wet to begin with seems to be doing quite well. It is very thick and stays green. It grows way faster than the front to the point where I can barely tell where I'm mowing in the front but the back bogs down the deck badly. I actually reduced the watering to 10 minutes on the back yard thinking I was over watering it. The bald spots in the back yard are gone and I can't even find where they were. The front and side yard are a different story. They are green and grass grows but not as well and it gets bald spots and some browner spots. I also have a large spot where an inflatable pool was that is fully grass but looks very different from the rest of the lawn. My septic is under the front lawn. I'm trying to decide what best to do to really bring this thing back without starting over. I have thought of aerating, dethatching, fertilizing, spray weed control etc. If nothing can be done this year I'm ok with that, I'm just trying to get a clear direction to get started.

I had a reputable lawn care co give me a fungal diagnosis and said I had chinch bugs at one point but that they were not found at the time he inspected. I looked for myself and maybe saw one chinch bug after checking several places...certainly nothing like what was shown in the video you posted. In the beginning what I had looked like every picture of grey leaf spot or dollar spot that I've ever seen. Maybe chinch bugs came in and hit it at some point or maybe the products I used damaged the grass. If it's the latter that's a little disheartening. My comment about runoff was an assumption due to the slight slope and the fact that the grass at the bottom of the slope was the first to show signs of being shallow rooted including one small area that's just slightly lower than the rest. EDIT - yes there is still some green grass in the median. There's even a sprig or two popping up from the middle of the brown. EDIT 2 - Just doing my due diligence I'm reading many reports that corn meal doesn't do anything for fungus and that it's a myth??? That being said I've read just as many that say it works. This post was edited by jamesr14 on Mon, Sep 15, 14 at 18:42

A picture would have been helpful to see the extent of the rot. The rotted areas need to be eliminated completely and cleaned. Ficus can take a lot of abuse. Then treat it like a cutting. Moist, well drained soil with a means to keep it humid is ideal. An empty large plastic coke bottle with the bottom cut off works as a good humidity dome for small plants. If you are going to use a bottle wash it with diluted bleach first and keep the cap off. Take the bottle off every day for a bit to air it out. The plant may need to be anchored to the soil so that it does not move when it is putting out new roots. Reduce the leaves to may be 3-4. Put it under CFL light. Not incandescents - they produce more heat than light.