It is pretty easy to tell if it is too late for crabgrass preventer. Go to the sunniest spot in your yard and look down. If there is no crabgrass growing yet, you should be ok applying now. If there is lots of crabgrass up and growing, you are too late for a preemergent to be effective. Personally, I would put it out either way because crabgrass will continue to germinate all spring, so you would at least be minimizing the weeds.

Your neighbor is correct in that soil along the curb may heat up sooner than the rest of the lawn. Especially true of a South facing curb. Treat that strip early (May 15) with Dimension crabgrass preventer and then hit the lawn again when the forsithia bloom around April 15. Dimension has some post emergent properties on young crabgrass sprouts. DITHIOPYR is the active ingredient in Dimension. I donÂt think an early application would wash away and be totally ineffective though. Apply twice in the problem areas. A drop spreader is ideal for use along the curb. Bill Hill

I was in a similar predicament last year -- new house, poor lawn, little clue about tending to lawns. There are probably more qualified readers who can give advice, but here's what I've learned. It's probably too late in the season to reseed now. It's getting colder and the days shorter. Plus, with fall right around the corner, you're new lawn will be quickly smothered by leaves. Accordingly, I'd wait until the spring before doing anything to your lawn. Now, you have two options: renovate the lawn or try to tilt the weed/grass balance in your favor through good cultural practices. 1) Renovation. This is a good option if you feel that you've got more weeds than grass. The steps are pretty easy and it's what I chose for my backyard, which was in shambles when I closed on the house. In short, renovation involves spraying a non-selective (read: it kills everything) herbicide like Round-Up. After a week or two, all plant life is dead -- grass, weeds, everything -- dead. At this point, consider amending your soil and ripping up the old dead lawn with a dethatcher, tiller, heavy-duty dethatching rake (if you're lawn is small enough), etc. Once this is done, your lawn is ready for seeding. If you do chose the renovation route, the next question is one of timing. When do you do it? Spring or Fall? You're correct that fall is the best time to seed. I can attest to this. Unlike spring, new grass in the fall doesn't have to compete with the hundreds of thousands of weed seeds lying dormant in your lawn waiting for warmer weather to germinate. I tried repairing some patches of lawn last spring and was tough going. The great conditions I created for my new grass was equally great for crabgrass and other weeds. The result: I was more or less right back where I stared. That's not to say that seeding in the spring won't work, it'll just be a little more difficult. On the other hand, if you don't seed in the spring, you'll have to deal with you're crabgrass until next fall. One option would be to renovate and apply a pre-emergent crab grass control that's designed not to kill grass seedlings. 2. Good Cultural Practices. I used this in my front yard where the weed/grass ratio was in my favor. My goal was to make the lawn as inhospitable to weeds as possible. First, I applied a pre-emergent crabgrass control to prevent the germination of crabgrass. (As you may know, crabgrass is an annual. It produces seeds, dies completely in the winter, and germinates again in the spring.) This worked pretty well. It didn't prevent 100% of the crabgrass, but it easily got 80-90% of it. Next, I raised the cutting height on my mower to its highest setting. The best defense is a good offense. A tallish stand of grass will shade and crowd out other weeds before they have time to get a foothold in your lawn. I also fertilize with a weed and feed product that binds to the leaves of weeds. The results have been favorable in the front. I had a decent lawn to start with and have pushed out nearly all of the weeds in the front. Conclusion. You have some choices. My advice is to fertilize this fall with a weed and feed winterizing mix. At the least, it'll provide a boost to what grass you do have. Then wait until spring and try to tilt the ratio in your favor and see if you can get ahead of the weeds in the spring through good cultural practices. If that doesn't work, begin lawn renovations in late August, about a week before Labor Day 2008. Lastly, consider picking up Scotts Lawn Care Guide. It's the antithesis of organic as it pushes the "Better Living through Chemistry" thing a bit hard, but it covers all of the basics. Also, Cornell's Extension Service has a great website on lawn care. Good luck! Here is a link that might be useful: Scotts Lawn Care Guide

What kind of grass are you planting? If you're planting perennial rye, spring seeding is fine, but if you're going with KBG or tall fescue, dormant seeding is a better option. To dormant seed, wait until it is too cold for the seed to germinate and spread the seed. I like to do it just before the first good snow storm of the winter. The snow melting and the freeze/thaw cycles bring the seed into contact with the soil. Once it is warm enough in the spring, the natural moisture from snow melt and spring rains should be enough to get germination. Dormant seeding usually gives you a head start of a couple of weeks on spring seeding.