It'll take fine with no additional help.

That having been said, compost sure won't hurt, so if you want to drop a quarter inch, go right ahead. And existing lawns can be fertilized now, and should be fertilized again at growth stoppage (usually, for you, around Thanksgiving).

If you haven't fed this fall, do so now. If you have, you can skip it now. But in either case, plan to do the winterization feeding at growth stoppage which, again, is usually your last clean-up mow.

For me, that's Thanksgiving week. For others, it varies. The lawn will still be green, but won't be growing any longer.

Neal's seeding in a existing mulch/flower bed. I think OM he's good. I would just work on leveling/grading out that new area, and bring the grade up to whatever level/pitch you want to tie into the existing hardscape

For leveling, use good soil that's as low in OM and compost as possible and never use compost to level. Compost rots, and highly organic topsoils will also rot away. One actually wants a soil as close to one's local soil as possible, and with low OM--you can always add your own.

What is OM?

what fertilizer do people suggest I use now or after I cut on thanksgiving?

Organic Matter. Or Organic Material.

Mostly, unless you have a specific need, fertilizers should be high nitrogen (the first number), low second and third numbers--for synthetic fertilizers. Or a high-protein fertilizer for early to mid-fall feedings (which would be marginal at this point and I'd consider it too late even for you). But for earlier feedings, like September to early October, soybean meal or the like.

In the synthetic range, urea (46-0-0) at bag rate of about 2.2 pounds per thousand square feet, or most decent fertilizers measuring around 35-0-5 ish applied at bag rate will be just fine.

And you can purchase an off-brand. My urea comes in a brown bag marked "Urea, Fertilizer Grade" and costs $12.50 for fifty pounds.

Morpheus, thank you. When should the Urea fertilizer be applied in your area?

I just did for my middlling-late-fall fertilization--but I have an elite Kentucky bluegrass lawn, which is notably hungry. All. The. Time. And with the fall we're having and seventy degree days at the end of October, it really needed that extra feed.

My last feeding will be "whenever the growth period ends and I do the last mow." Since it takes me some time to be sure of that fact, it's really about a week or ten days after growth stops. And that's usually around Thanksgiving, give or take some time.

Depending on your lawn, that can be earlier or later. Some area lawns will hit that almost the first instant the temperatures drop. Mine's near the last one, and it never really stops growing--by January, it'll be slightly shaggy. And still green. But that's well cared-for and heavily manipulated elite bluegrass for ya. It has the resources and temperature tolerance to stay up even when daytime highs are in the thirties.

Do try this at home; we do the same on my mother's builder's-grade tri-mix lawn and it looks great in January as well. It's not even that hard.

Do you buy liquid or granular? And if granular, do you first mix with water or just spread it granular. How long until people can have more heavy traffic on the lawn after applying? Can you give me a rough idea asto how big of a bag (pounds?) I should buy for 1/4 acre lawn?

Granular, I refuse to even try to handle liquid fertilizers and they're inefficient anyway due to the dilution issues and application rates required. So for me, it's urea in the bag.

You do have to be a little careful with the stuff. Not for you, it's pretty harmless. Edible, in fact, and used as a bulking agent in cattle feed (when feed grade urea), and we produce the molecule by the tanker-load over the course of our lifetimes. But if accidentally overapplied, it can burn the lawn. Urea does have its disadvantages.

So it can be smarter to start with a lower-powered, store-bought granular alternative that isn't 46% nitrogen. Something in the high twenties or low thirties gives a lot more margin against burn...and you still see a lof of, "I burned the lawn..." posts on here. Fortunately, at this point in the year, those are rare.

There are dozens of granular store fertilizers ranging from around 20-0-0 to around 35-0-0 (those second and third numbers will be low, not 0, but you get the idea). Any of them are just fine, although for fall fertilization I'd actually choose one that does not have slow release nitrogen. Most cheaper fertilizers won't, or won't have much.

How much you'll need for a quarter acre lawn (about 10,000 square feet) would be around 22 pounds of urea (so that $12.50 fifty pound bag I get would do your lawn twice with a bit left over), you'd need a 30 pound bag of 35-0-0, and if you were to go as low as 20-0-0 you'll need a fifty pound bag.

I'm assuming application of 1 pound of elemental nitrogen per thousand square feet, which is a relatively standard number for a typical feeding.

And it makes the math very easy:

Poundage per thousand square feet = 100 / First Number On The Bag

So for urea, 46-0-0, 100/46 = about 2.2. For you, 22 pounds over 10,000 square feet (near enough).

That's why the equivalent numbers (which don't quite apply) stack oddly when feeding organically. Soybean meal equates to around 7-1-2 in terms of a fertilizer, so 100/7 = 14 pounds per thousand. So you (and I, actually) need about 140 pounds of soybean meal to feed the lawn properly. Round that to 150 pounds and use three bags.

Compared to 22 pounds (half a bag) of urea, one carts around a lot of weight feeding organically for equivalent nitrogen levels...but there are many other advantages to mixing it up with the organics as well. More on that later if you're interested.

Would this work? It’s 22-0-10

my neighbor used it about a week ago and he said he’s got about a half bag left and I can have it. But if this won’t work, I can buy something else.

https://www.greenviewfertilizer.com/labels/2131174.PDF

That's fine. I never object to some extra potassium (the third number). It's pretty harmless to have some extra hanging around even if you have sufficient amounts. Most of the N is fast, although enough is slower that I might hesitate a bit to use it in November...but only hesitate a bit. It's really a pretty low amount, comparatively speaking, and our weather isn't going to lead to ground freeze all that quickly anyway.

For your lawn, you'd need 100/22= 4.5 pounds of product per thousand square feet, or a grand total of 45 pounds of the fertilizer for your whole lawn.

This isn't an extremely powerful fertilizer would be the takeaway point here. :-) If he has half a bag left--24 pounds--then you have enough for about half a feeding.

Half a feeding, done right now, is better than nothing. By half a feeding. :-)

For the November feeding, make sure to give it a full feed.

Neither one is going to visibly improve the lawn by any vast amount and you probably won't notice much, if anything at all. Although you might notice a greener color that stays greener deeper into the winter, now that I say that. And they will improve your winter survivability and the strength of the root systems. Plus you'll notice that the spring green-up starts a bit earlier (but not much), and the growth flush is stronger, the grass spreads more, and the whole thing looks better.

Once this is done, your next feeding is Memorial Day, 2020. No, seriously. Hands off for all of early spring--feeding too early does nothing but weaken the lawn for summer and cause problems with flushes of growth that damage the roots and invite fungal and insect problems later on.

How many years do you expect it to take before there is noticeable improvement?

if i 1) use this fertilizer now

2) apply fertilizer late November.

3) overseed in January.

4) fertilize 2020 Memorial Day.

5) overseed in 2020 fall

6) fertilize 2020 fall?

Will 2021 likely offer a noticeable improvement? Earlier or later?

I also

have an area that was mulch and a part of a flower bed but then used as a wood pile and storage area. It’s mostly dirt with some sparse grass growing on its own, is this an area I can also seed in the winter? Should I apply any grass now even if most won’t take? Must I wait until spring since it’s a bit more of planting new grass rather than overseeding? Can I do both?

Oh, you'll see improvement starting in spring of 2020. The fertilizer you're putting down now may even show some improvement in November of this year, but I don't think it's going to be extreme and I don't want to you to count on anything.

Assuming you haven't been feeding properly, improvement starts instantly. What with overseeding and the improvement you'll get from that in spring, plus spring growth and the Memorial Day boost (and remember, you're going to have to water the grass next summer because the new stuff can't handle summers yet, it's too young), reseeding again late next summer, and consistent feedings thereafter, next fall should look pretty good.

I'd strongly advise getting a soil test through Logan Labs as well. We can either confirm your soil is OK (highly unlikely in your locale) or find out how much in terms of calcium, potassium, and other minerals we need to add, and when, to work around everything else (highly probable). You can do that this fall or next spring. It's neither difficult nor expensive, although the proper fixes sometimes can be.

Fortunately, fixes can always be put off or slowed down to match any given budget, and fixes will always improve a lawn (and gardens).

".... is this an area I can also seed in the winter? Should I apply any grass now even if most won’t take? Must I wait until spring since it’s a bit more of planting new grass rather than overseeding? Can I do both? "

It's really too late this fall, we're running on the last fumes in summer's tank. November first looks like we finally start getting normal late-fall weather. so rather than waste the seed that'll go through germination and then die, I'd hold it until this winter. But it's certainly wide open for dormant seeding just like any other area--simply apply at the new seeding rate on the bag instead of the overseeding rate listed. Then plan on overseeding it again in August of 2020.

This is good news and thanks for the details.

Should I De thatch my lawn now or closer to the time I sow the grass seeds?

I read aeration is good too but the machines appear heavy and I can’t lift one in and out of my suv on my own. If it’s vital I can try to find another way but hopefully it’s not vital.

I own a metal rake and someone told me I should take the whole yard to break up the surface before I sow grass seeds but is that different when I’m going to apply before a snow fall in January or February?

How much thatch do you have? Amounts of a quarter inch or less are nothing to worry about and can actually have some benefits. The seed can get through that. If you see bare ground extensively in open areas, your thatch amounts are pretty trim.

Very thick thatch I'd dethach ASAP. It's really rather too late (dethatching does damage to the lawn that, as of now, doesn't have time to repair), but you don't have much choice.

Excessive thatch is usually an indicator of a misbalance (generally high nitrogen with a lousy soil health, or long neglect with lousy soil health, although it does vary).

Aeration can be helpful but it's unnecessary and, again, it's the wrong time of year to do so so--that's a spring or early fall thing when the lawn has time to recover from the damage you just did. The ultimate goal is to shift to organic feeding at least partially, encourage plenty of worms, and have them do the job for you. I haven't aerated ever.

Breaking the surface can, again, be helpful, particularly in large, blank areas of soil but it's also, again, unnecessary. Grass seed is pointy for a reason, and the winter rains and snow will work it in more than well enough. Heck, today would have worked it in well enough had it been cold enough. It wasn't.

Morpheus, what fertilizer should I be adding at the end of this month? Is that the urea granules mentioned earlier?

this isn’t a related topic but as we live in a similar climate, would this be an acceptable time to plant a new bush on the side of my home? My local nursery is having a 50% off sale and i have a space I’d like to fill with a Bush. Just leaves, not a flower bush of any kind. Is this 50% off a good deal or will this bush not be alive by April and I shouldn’t throw away my money?

Can you be more specific about the type of "bush"? If fully hardy for your zone, no reason at all you can't plant now.

(btw, ALL nonconiferous shrubs flower, whether or not the flowers are very obvious. That is how they procreate!)

Urea would be great, or the fertilizers I mentioned earlier. Anything with lots of fast nitrogen at this point in the year up to the year's end is grand. I'll be using urea (46-0-0) for my final feeding when growth stops. Which it has not yet done, today is still 55 degrees!

I am somewhat more hesitant to give a full green light to planting even hardy bushes than the above. Weaker bushes, bad winters, shallow roots, frost heaving due to air pockets...they can all lead to bad outcomes. I'm the sort that prefers to plant things in spring and coddle and spoon feed them through their first summer as if they were invalids.

I'm going to give you a greenish-yellow light. If the bush top is healthy, and if the roots go all the way to the bottom of a pot at least a foot deep, and if it's hardy for at least Zone 6 (a full zone north of you), and if you keep a bit of an eye on it to make sure it doesn't heave out due to freezing and thawing, then yes, go ahead and plant one. If the area is very windy, I might put up a wind break around the side of the bush that usually gets the heaviest, coldest winds just to shield it a bit.

The side of the house should be a little protected (from wind by, at worst, bow shock and, at best, by being on the side that breaks the wind), warmer due to radiation and conduction...but could be a minor problem in other ways if the bush is full sun and you're planting on the northeastern face or something like that! So check the tags and talk to the nursery person, of course! House edges also freeze/thaw more often and do lead to more frost heaving. I have that problem with all my landscape lighting that borders the house.

So if the price is right and the bush is healthy and you're sure of the location...go for it. It's got a good chance of survival if you monitor it a little bit the first winter.

Where I live the 10 day forecast still has the occasional low 50s day as a high but the low never gets above mid 40s.

does this indicate the grass has stopped growing or almost stopped? Is it time to cut and apply urea? I have off work this coming Friday and can do my work then if that’s not too late.

earlier you mentioned a possible problem with a novice adding too much urea and causing harm. How likely is that? And since it’s my first time, would you suggest something helpful to apply but maybe not as optimal as urea, but also something I cannot mess up?

You're close. This is not an exact science. If you expect the temperatures to keep going down (mostly) and if this is the absolute end of the season and you don't expect to be cutting more than maybe once or possibly twice just to clean it up yet, go ahead and do it. As long as the grass is still green. A surprise week-long warm up isn't going to be a problem.

You can tell if the grass has stopped growing because it's stopped growing and you're not cutting very much any longer. :-) Mostly, your cuts, done weekly, are now just knocking the tips off--if you're even cutting weekly any longer. If the grass doesn't need it, it's done growing. But it should be green to winterize. If it's gone brown already, skip it. It's too late.

You're in the same shape I was when I winterized, because I don't want to be out there when it's 40 or below wandering around the lawn in my coat, ear muffs (quite gentlemanly) and gloves.

It's certainly possible (although far more difficult at fifty degrees and below!) to overapply urea. The stuff's a bit touchy because it's quite strong. But that's true of any off-the-shelf fertilizer, and if you're more comfortable with something like that, go for it. Any good synthetic fertilizer with a high first number and low second number (the third number is immaterial, really, but going low on that is just as easy) will do very well.

Most commercial fertilizers are at least slightly diluted. Pure urea is around 46-0-0 (it actually will vary a bit due to purity, slightly downward). Commercial fertilizers tend to range from 10-10-10 (not good for winterizer due to the second and third numbers being the same as the first) to around 35-0-5 (great for winterizer due to the second and third number being much lower than the first).

Just follow bag instructions for application. If you notice it's going out faster than it should, readjust. If it's going out FAR faster than it should, you might have to flush the soil--but it would have to be going out at double the rate or greater to risk a burn in December.

And it should be obvious if it flows out that fast!

You can calculate how many pounds should be flowing out like this:

100/ First Number on Bag = Maximum number of Pounds per Thouand Square Feet of Lawn

...Really, it's that simple. So, in the above, for urea, 100/42 = around 2.2 (really, you can call this anywhere from 2 to 2.5 and you'd be OK in December, although I'd call it 2.2 maximum in May unless you irrigate or it's damp).

Conversely, that 2.2 times the 43% N in the urea will be 2.2 * 0.43 = 1.00 (close enough) pounds of nitrogen per thousand square feet, our target for the winterization.

Yes, math. Booooring. Or just set your spreader to what the bag recommends. For urea, start low. Very low, and plan on doing the lawn twice if you run out of lawn before you use the correct amount of urea.

I have patches of brown grass. But 85% is still bright green.

Where does this leave me on the spectrum? Too late? Still add fertilizer for the winter?

Is this a good time to add some organic material over some dead patches? Especially since I plan on overseeing this February? I hope you had a good thanksgiving. I’m thankful for all your help on this forum/topic.

" I have patches of brown grass. But 85% is still bright green. "

Go for it. You've had that brown grass and dead areas all along.

Thanksgiving was great, and I hope yours was too! And thanks for the thanks!

It's not too late to compost the turkey carcass. :-) Although there are some rather (sensible) rules on doing that at home, actually, so it's smarter to simply toss that unless you know what you're doing...I just throw those things away.

You can add OM at this point if you wish, or wait until spring if you want. For dead or blank areas, any time is a good time for OM. Compost would be best right now as peat moss or anything light will blow off in winter winds. Compost certainly won't.

Nothing will begin to decay until spring, of course.

And with seeding, keep to a quarter inch at a time. "A time" being no more than every six weeks, tops, to give the crowns of the grass time to adjust and the compost time to settle.

Mowing in leaves is rather different, being airy and thin. I regularly mow those in so that I can barely see the tips of the grass. :-) They settle fast.

Would this product offer the NPK you’d suggest for a pre winter treatment?

https://www.amazon.com/Ammonium-Sulfate-Fertilizer-Greenway-Biotech/dp/B00E6D0OXU/ref=mp_s_a_1_2_sspa?keywords=Ammonium-Sulfate-Fertilizer-Greenway&qid=1576019091&sr=8-2-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUEzQUNSUjNMVTdJRE5BJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwOTM5NTc1MzQzTFRLSjIzRDNSQiZlbmNyeXB0ZWRBZElkPUEwNTg0NDU3M045WDJOVTdQRUhVViZ3aWRnZXROYW1lPXNwX3Bob25lX3NlYXJjaF9hdGYmYWN0aW9uPWNsaWNrUmVkaXJlY3QmZG9Ob3RMb2dDbGljaz10cnVl

And will this help an amateur like me not cause damage to the lawn if I overlap my spreading?

I have a rasied bed garden along the side of my house. Do I need to be careful around that part of the house to make sure none of this gets on that soil?

Also, I did apply some fresh topsoil over a portion of my back yard after removing some decorative rocks. Do you suspect I can over winter the grass on that area at the same time as my winter overseeing? Should I make sure that topsoil (sold to me as ‘premium’, whatever that means.) gets this fertilizer too? Same quantity? Or a different fertilizer or none?

Lots of Qs. Thanks in advance for the As

That would be fine, or really, anything off the shelf at the Home Depot. Like I said, it's really hard to burn it in December. :-)

It's fine to app that to the raised bed. I regularly strike the garden beds fairly intentionally to make sure the lilacs and other things get a bit of a feeding as they drop for winter. It won't necessarily help anything this late, but it won't hurt, either.

And you can certainly hit the new topsoil with this as well, without any alterations. Nitrogen does stick around in the soil (you can fall fertilize for a spring planting and it does work for, say, corn and the like), just not very well. But frozen soil won't allow it to sink through easily, either.

Morpheus,

we had a busier than expected holiday season and I didn’t apply any nitrogen to my lawn in December. Did I miss my window? We have some rain forecasted for next weekend and multiple days with high of 50s or upper 40s in my 10 day forecast. Should I apply anything or wait? I can apply granular urea early this week if it’s a good idea. Please let me know.

If it's still green, you still could if you wanted.

My area never received a snow in February. So I wasn’t therefore able to plant grass. When should I plant in the spring and how much weeding must I do over the bare soil portions? Do I also need straw over the seed?

You can do it right now for a spring seeding, without straw (never use straw unless it's known to be free of weed seeds, actually).

Snow is not required and a lot of us had a snow-free, or at least snow-light year! But you're still in good time for a dormant seeding if you do it now.

If the weeding over the bare portions is minimal, skip it--there should be nothing alive over them right now. If there is, I would remove that before seeding.

If I don’t use straw, won’t the birds eat all my seed? This is my first time planting grass. And part of the bare portion of soil where I need to plant new grass is pitched at about a 30-40 degree angle. Do I need to worry that a heavy rain or heavy watering will wash this seed away? Any tips on what to do after laying down the seed or, this time of year, do I just spread it and then leave it alone? Thank you

You'll certainly notice birds but if you're dropping it at about the new lawn rate, you'll be fine. The birds aren't going to get enough to matter--or notice.

That's quite an angle! Washout is likely to be a bit of a problem there, yes. Straw wouldn't help, but burlap might if you tack it down over the top (the grass can grow through it just fine). Remove it when you see it sprouting through. Or just let it go and see what you get. Spring seedings are always a little touch and go anyway, and you may end up with a great stand of grass...or not much of anything depending on happenstance.

Roughing the surface a bit with a rake can certainly help the seed stay in place, if you can do so. Then seed, and walk over the surface to tamp it down a bit (if you have a seed roller, that's nice too).

But otherwise, the purpose of this is that the March soil tends to be damp all the time anyway. Evapotranspiration is close to zero--so unless you're in a drought, you can pretty much ignore the stuff. It'll sprout when it gets warm enough, at which point you begin paying attention to it when the weather gets warmer and drier and the grasses need coddling through their first late spring and summer (which they will, they won't have the root systems to survive summer this year and will need your help with watering every now and again).

Thank you. Is there a brand of grass seed you’d recommend? Is there anything i should look for when buying quality seeds for this time of year?

Look for something with zero noxious seed (most seed should read zero up here in the north; southerners apparently aren't so lucky). And with minimal weed seeds.

Normally I'd recommend matching your lawn as it stands, but if you don't know the cultivars offhand, the best advice is simply to buy a standard sun-shade mix off the shelf. That's probably what you have, or close.

Thank you.

should I apply fertilizer of any kind to the areas where I’m planting new grass from seed, and or the yard where I’m overseeding? let me know what you’d recommend

Not at this point, and now? I'd hurry. Nine days ago you were on time. Now? You're running out of winter and moving into a much more risky spring seeding. If you continue to get delayed, skip it until fall.

I planted on this past Saturday and Mother Nature or I have been watering daily. I used the word planting and should have typed planted. I hope the seeds take.

When would you apply fertilizer and would you target the new grass orjust apply something to the entire yard (maybe nitrogen?). Thanks

Just target the whole yard at the point of proper feeding--Memorial Day. Give or take two weeks either way.

If you really want to give it a single shot of starter fertilizer, I wouldn't completely object, but it's probably a waste without a good soil test and seed contains everything the new grass will need for quite a while anyway.

Otherwise, just use a good high-nitrogen fertilizer at bag rate.

Keep in mind, you'll have to water this through summer, particularly if it gets hot and dry. I haven't seen the longest-range forecast yet, but...

It has been two weeks and I am not yet noticing any grass in the areas where I’m trying to grow new grass. Mother Nature has been doing most all my work with rain so i cannot imagine the top Layer has dried out but I guess that possibly happened during an afternoon.

while it has been raining most days it hasnt been too sunny and temperatures usually 40-50s as the Highs. I raked my soil a bit and then spread the seed but didn’t apply soil on top? Is it too late for this step? I can still see the seed sitting on top of the soil. I hope this is just delayed for one reason and not a lost cause. I will continue to water daily and keep the seeds damp/moist and await your advice.

If the highs are only running in the fifties, it hasn't gone off yet. :-) This is why we dormant seed--we're letting nature set the clocks. The clock still hasn't hit midnight. Current temperatures are still running fifty or so here, which is too chilly for seed sprout.

Check the seed, but as long as the soil is damp, there's no need to water. The sun is low and weak, and the air is still very cool and damp. It's only if rainfall stops that you'll need to water and that doesn't look too likely.

Thankfully this was a false alarm on my part, I wasn’t looking closely enough but when I got closer, I saw some growth, still not too noticeable. most seeds haven’t begun sprouting grass yet, but at least it has started. I’ll keep watering and hope the sun helps.

still my question remains, should I add just a little bit of loose soil on top of the grass seed?

Is daily watering not needed at this point? Will the seeds only dry out to a problematic level if there no rain and lots of sun for a few days in a row?

You really don't need daily watering right now, nor to cover the seed. Grass seed isn't that particular. You can if you wish--anything up to 1/4" absolute maximum, and 1/8" being better--but you don't have to.

A lot of that seed dug itself in already anyway.

Daily watering is absolutely required in an August planting where daily highs are still in the low 80 degree range and dropping into the seventies (the fast germination stage). Fifty and rising slowly, with regular rain...not so much.

Just make sure the soil isn't going dry. With local weather patterns, it doesn't look like it's going to do so.

I'm just outside of Phila. and overseeded with some TTTF seed March 1st. Our soil temperature is still in the high 40's so very little germination at this point. Next week we will see temperatures in the mid to upper 60's and by then the soil temps should be near 50 or above.

You should see some growth by end of next week. Rainfall every 2-3 days should be sufficient to keep soil moist enough for time being. End of April-June expected to be slightly above average temps with average rainfall.

Spring seeding is a loosing battle with the weeds but I couldn't stand looking at the bare spots from killing off a creeping charlie infestation this past Fall. I'll plan to seed again late August -early Sept.

Will

Thanks for your help Will. I imagine we have similar temperatures. I’ve noticed a lot of grass growing, with much of it over an inch already. But there are plenty of dirt or very sparse patches. I possibly didn’t put down enough seed or the seed I purchased wasn’t the best product or rain washed away some areas into lower level ground.

but I’m wondering if I still have time to put down more seed this weekend and try to fill those patches by summer. Is that possible? I did get a mixture so is it likely that the cool weather grass has grown and the hot weather grass seed is not yet growing at all?

Morpheuspa,

all your advice has been extremely helpful and I’ve seen much grass growing to this point.

what is the problem with sowing some more grass seed this weekend? Is it simply a guaranteed waste of money or could there be any other issue with trying to sow grass seed now?

the smaller parts of my lawn where I attempted to grow new grass appears patchy and I believe I didn’t distribute the seed well or didn’t keep it in place properly with my watering.

as you can read my post just above this, I’m wondering if I could somehow fill these patches in this weekend. Or if maybe some of these patches are warm weather seed that didn’t get germinate. Your thoughts?

You're probably still getting patchy sprout at this point as the temperatures aren't consistently high enough for everything to grow yet.

But if you want, you can spread a bit more grass seed. Anything you spread now has a lower survival percentage than anything that's already sprouted this spring--which isn't exactly high to begin with--and will require even more coddling come July when things get hot.

Before you do, inspect the area closely. You may have a bit more than you think already. New grasses are fine little sprouts like...well, grass blades. Single fine grass blades. Disturbing the area too much will destroy those, so be very careful.

Could I lay down a little grass with just a little compost or soil on top, this way I won’t have to rake or disturb the area other than more seed and soil?

Is there a a negative reaction I can cause with this plan, other than throwing money out the window?

MorpheusPA,

Memorial Day is right around the corner, are you gathering the products to feed your lawn? What type of product(s) would you suggest be used for this late May lawn feeding? How much or little should be applied, and will it be ideal to do this before or after forecasted rain?

Sorry, I seem to have missed your previous question as well. You could have seeded a bit, but would have lost a high percentage of the sprout during summer.

Quarantine has totally borked my normal response to feeding this year. Normally I'd have gone to get soybean meal and fed around now or so, give or take. While the place I go to is open, it's not somewhere I need to go, therefore I didn't. I'm using Milorganite this spring, for about three-quarters of the feeding, and filling in with urea, and simply feeding right around Memorial Day to account for the fact that Milo is a faster nitrogen supply than soybean meal is.

That's fine. I'll time it so that rain's expected within a reasonable time period to wash in the urea, and just enough to wash it in correctly (a quarter inch to somewhat more).

Morpheuspa,

is this the Milo you are using? Slow release gradual? And what type of urea are you using? or can you suggest what I should purchase? Thank you

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07RD3QS7V#Ask