It sounds like you basically ignored Grass' original advice and went ahead and did what you wanted to do. The problems you're having were cast in stone when the lawn was seeded in June. The only worse time of year to seed is the few weeks after you seeded. You're lucky to have any grass at all. If you are shooting for "level" in your back yard, you are going to be disappointed. Level soil does not drain. You need the soil to have a slope so it drains away from your house. You cannot add soil up against the house, so if adding soil outwards away from the house will redirect the drainage toward the house, then you cannot use any soil there. Adding topsoil to a lot that was once properly graded is a huge mistake. It is a common misconception that adding soil will help the old soil. It won't. Adding organic fertilizer or compost will help. 99.99% of the time the problem with the old soil was depletion of the organic microbes. Adding organic fertilizer feeds them and they repopulate the soil. You should not have to reseed a Kentucky bluegrass lawn. KBG spreads and forms a dense carpet of grass. Give it a chance, and it will become dense all by itself. Next year will be great and 2015 will be fantastic. Just leave it alone. Overseeding is a concept for fescue and rye, not KBG. From the picture it looks like you are mowing at the lowest setting. It will do better mowed between mid way and the top. That will help keep the weeds out. Mature KBG lawns should have little problem with weeds. The hopping insects are harmless. You wasted your energy, time, and money on those guys. Furthermore your insecticide will wipe out the beneficial insects in your soil. Those include the invisible insects that were helping to give you good soil. So by adding the insecticide you have made your soil just that much less healthy. At this point you can give the insecticide a few weeks to dissipate and then come in with the chickety doo. After doing this to the soil it sorely needs the chicken manure to replenish the microbes you've been killing. So if I can be helpful instead of critical, I'd suggest you save your money on seed and spend it on the chicken doo. Also when the grass stops growing and before the first snow, hit it with a high N fast release fertilizer as a winterizer. In the early spring use a preemergent that does not contain fertilizer. Do not fertilize with any chemical ferts until Memorial Day. When the lawn comes out of dormancy, it will be growing like a wildfire whether you fertilize or not. By fertilizing early you can force the grass to use all it's energy causing it to crash in late April. Avoid that and just fertilize in late May. Watering has not been mentioned at all in this thread. We often assume the OP knows how to water, but in your case I'm not so sure. I just can't imagine how you still have any grass left after a June seeding unless you were watering "wrong." Wrong means lightly every other day or more. In your case it might have accidentally allowed the new grass to survive, but it is a bad habit for long term care. This time of year in northern WI you should be watering about once every 3 weeks. If you are watering more frequently than that, then that will encourage more and more weeds to come to the lawn. If you need to change to once per month, do it slowly. Then in the spring you can start with monthly and as the temps move up into the 70s, move to once every 3 weeks. In the 80s go to watering every 2 weeks. The amount to water is an inch unless Mother Nature has helped you out. Measure an inch using cat food or tuna cans placed around the yard.

I am finalizing my plans for overseeding. I have decided to rent a slice seeder for overseeding. Anyone have any advice before I do? I assume I need to flag my sprinkler heads and avoid them? Seed of choice for this year is: I broadcast sprayed yesterday with a good amount of 2D4. Any other suggestions? I have a particular weed that I can seem to get rid of, I'll follow up later with a few pics of this weed for advice. It's a clump of crab grass that has migrated all over the front yard.

I've had really good luck with the Hogan Blend from Hogan's Seed out of Tennessee. Once you factor in shipping costs it's only slightly more than the better seed at the big box stores however it is sod quality so it contains no weed seed.

How big are the bare patches? Could you start the seed as "plugs" and then plant those instead of seeding in place? This technique would work well with a species like buffalo grass (Buchloe dactyloides) which will send out stolons and colonize a larger area than a bunch grass like little bluestem or a grama. Though, its not an overly agressive grass so it wont take over like Attila the Hun. You can of course do the same with a bunch grass, start it in a container and plant it out once its is larger. By doing that you will have better control over germination conditions and the plant will be more robust and better able to compete with the existing plants. It would be helpful to know what species of grass you have there though because in some cases they might simply be too much for many native grasses. Smooth brome (Bromus inermis) for example is an rhizomatous grass species that creates a dense sod which will choke out pretty much anything you try to plant. Grass is not broadcast seeded. You don't get the right seed to soil contact for it to germinate well and it will likely just blow or wash away or be eaten by birds. Instead it is either drilled to the proper depth or spread into a soft, prepared seed bed and "raked in" to cover the seeds and a roller than used to ensure good contact. Making sure that the seeds remain wet (they are only planted about 1/8" deep) up to, and even for a while after, germination is crucial. That is one of the biggest causes of failure when reseeding a lawn or a restoration site. Mulch is infinately useful. Depending on the size of the area you can use burlap or something similar (the seedlings will grow through it and it will decompose on its own) or a loose application of straw. Wheat is an annual so any plants that pop up won't really cause a long term problem. We even used it as a cool season cover crop in our restoration areas on occaision. I wouldn't use grass hay since its typically full of weed seeds and the grasses used are often exotic species that you probably don't want growing and crowding out your natives. Given water and warmth grass seeds germinate readily and easily. They don't require cold treatment (stratification) or keep you waiting for weeks while water tries to enter a tough seed coat. But if that top layer of soil dries out, you're in for a lot of frusteration. If you don't live in an area that gets enough rain to keep the soil wet or you can't irrigate, I don't think you are going to get the results you want, especially just throwing them out and letting nature "take its course" so to speak.