How often do you fertilize?

4 times a year. A spring fertilizer in mid-May, a little Milorganite in early July, a starter fert in early Sept when I aerate and seed, and then a little Milorganite before the winter. I'm careful to not put down more than 2lbs of N / 1000 sq ft across a full year, getting another 1lb or so from leaving the clipping.

How do you water when you reseed? KBG typically takes 3 full weeks of daily watering to germinate. And yes, I see the irony of me suggesting daily watering when I advocate deep and infrequent, but starting new seed is different.

Where do you live? Can you post a closeup of the grass from like 3 inches away? We need to see the grass blades clearly so we can identify what you have and any possible disease issues.

Sorry, I'm in Southern CT (I forget that my location doesn't automatically post like most forums).

I water 2-3x a day for several weeks when I overseed.

In the past my lawn was seeded/overseeded with Lesco Sun and Shade, which I believe is TTTF, KBG and Rye. Past few years I've just used TTTF and KBG.

I don't believe the problem is fungus or anything like that, these are just basically dead spots with nothing but dirt and some dead grass (but mostly just dirt).

In any case, here are some close ups (from another post where I was looking for weed ID, but you can still see the surrounding good grass):

https://i.imgur.com/CGkp539.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/zGkCs9a.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/yyZ0CXG.jpg

Even though you aerate, is it possible those patches (in the initial post) have thatch build up?

Ok it looks like mostly KBG. It should spread to fill those spots. Is the lawn getting full sun? KBG doesn't like shade. Also, when did those patches die?

It's possible there is some thatch on those spots, but I'm often raking them out. I don't know when those specific spots died, my lawn has just always kind of been like that for some reason. Not sure if it's the same spots, or some spots get better and then others appear... I've just never been able to get a really large area of thick/plush grass. It looks good from afar, but as soon as I start walking over any area, I see these patches. Maybe I need a better dethatching job one year? I always use a tow behind, never a machine.

Do you have dogs?

No pets

My suggestion would be to simply pamper the bluegrass to encourage it to spread. Apply fertilizer at a rate of 0.3 lb N every 2 weeks and cut at a height of 2 inches without breaking the 1/3 rule.

Thanks. I'll give that a try.

A couple of us have experimented with overdosing with organic fertilizer. The result has been the same. The yard never looked better. In my case I put 40 pounds per 1,000 of corn gluten meal every 4 weeks. morpheuspa used about that much split between Milorganite and soybean meal, but he applied every week. On another forum andy has done something similar. The upshot is you cannot overdo organics.

Something you can overdo is water. I suspect you are already doing deep and infrequent, but it's worth asking the question. How often and for how long do you water? And as a point of reference, I have not watered my lawn yet this year and it looks amazing with the deep and very infrequent rainfall we've gotten.

Thanks. I have not watered this fall, and that's correct, when I do water, it's deep and infrequent. I'll try a few heavy does of Milorganite in a few test areas and see how it goes.