From your handle I'm assuming you live in British Columbia. I've been off by an entire hemisphere before, but it's important to know where you are. How do you water it? How long and how often? If you don't water it at least once a month when it's not raining you're going to have problems. Liquid or spray on fertilizers are not really lawn fertilizers so much as they're a pacifier for the owner. If you really want to use them the lawn needs it at least once a month and preferably every 2-3 weeks. They supply ounces of nitrogen per 1,000 square feet to the yard and don't last long. Dry fertilizers apply pounds of fertilizer per 1,000 and last all season. Dry fertilizers come in a 10-50 pound bag. Chemical ferts usually come in 10-13 pound bags. Organic ferts come in 40-50 pound bags. Morph and I and several others are 99% organic with everything, so we like to encourage going that direction. It really works and it's hard to make a mistake. If you're in BritCol then your lawn is most likely rye but it might have fescue or possibly Kentucky bluegrass in it. Rye and fescue are bunch grasses meaning they don't spread much. When the plant dies from any reason, it is not replaced except by you reseeding in the fall. If you don't do that, then you get bare spots that just get bigger. If your area gets much shade and you have rye, it's really going to die. You have to use fescue in shady areas in the north.

Hvae you done the shampoo thing? If you are concerned that the dirt is too hard, the surfactants in the shampoo will allow better water absorption. Have you had a soil test? By the way, I doubt anyone is reading this thread because it takes too darn long to scroll to the bottom to see what was said. And no way are they are going to read through the whole saga. I get an email alert that you said something (because I had commented) and I can click to the bottom. But anyone new to the thread would have to scroll down a long time. You might start another thread for future questions and concerns. And then someone other than me might have ideas for you.

Thanks for the reply! I'll take a close up of the area and post tomorrow - but it's not yellow or tan - just bright green and mossy. I live in Chicago and and never use a sprinkler, always mow high and not sure on the type of grass. I haven't mowed that corner of the lawn for most of the last summer - it didn't grow much at all and the ground was always soaked that the mower would tear up the grass just by going over it. I have removed the standing water issue around the end of the garden so hopefully that part of the lawn will dry out but was unsure of the next steps to bring this area back to normal healthy growth. Should I 'wait and see' once the lawn had a chance to dry out to see if it recovers or should I be looking to apply any specific fertilizer or pesticide to address the current state, etc? Somewhat related, I have buried a corrugated drain pipe to the end of the lawn so the sump pump water exits the end of the lawn, is it generally ok for there to be some standing water in the end of the pipe? If you look in the pop up emitter, there is always water in there that will only get pushed out once the simp pump runs and pushes that standing water out...

Soil test kits are notoriously awful. I've seen claims that they can be used correctly but I remain dubious due to personal experience with the allegedly trained. Send soil off to be properly tested through Logan Labs. For twenty bucks (basic test), you'll find out every major resource your soil has. Even if, theoretically, your soil test kit returned a picture-perfect pH, a pH tells you very little indeed. It tells you nothing about what resources the soil requires to rebalance it, and nothing in terms of how much calcium, magnesium and potassium need to be added to correct the problem because it also tells you nothing about your soil's capacity to hold resources. The balance of all three impact your soil pH, and all three need to be in the correct proportion for your grass (or any other plant, for that matter) to flourish. Honestly, if there were one thing I could get rid of, it would be the concept that pH were important, or had any real meaning at all. It really doesn't, and when reading tests, I tend to mention it because people expect me to, but otherwise defer and say that I'll be discussing it under EC (exchange capacity), Calcium, Magnesium, Potassium, and Sodium (the latter does impact pH, but is rarely significant outside desert regions and, if it is significant, should be abolished). Seriously, the discussion of pH tests should be started with the simple commandment, "Thou Shalt Not because it tells thee nothing good." Don't get me started on types of limestone. Just don't. Mosses tend to flourish in poor soils that have sufficient moisture (acidic, alkaline, they really don't care that much and I get mosses growing right on native limestone rock, pH about 7.8). They're weak, can be displaced by almost anything else, but until the initial poor soil issue is corrected they're going to dominate. It was an issue I had when my soil was in full collapse (nearly no resources) and that disappeared once I repaired it. Barring repairing the initial problem, there's no sense killing or doing much of anything about the moss.