Oh. I should add that I'm on Day 19 with the Mag 3, overseeded the weaker/blank/washed out areas last Saturday, have about 65% color, 80% sprouted areas, and 5% of the area that actually is turning into thin lawn.

Plus about a hundred thousand weeds.

This is going to be painfully slow. Peachfuzz on labor day, Drop a few more seeds. One inch by Halloween. Nice lawn June 1, 2008. Dormant seed bare spots after thanksgivings. Best lawn in the county next year, without a doubt. Bill Hill

Morpheus, send her on a 2 week spa/resort vacation. When she comes back the lawn will look great, plus the relaxing spa vacation will have relaxed her so much that she will care less about the lawn? (:

What is DS?

Resist the temptation to spray the weeds. that will only hurt your seedlings. Broadleaf weed killer in the spring AFTER the grass begins to grow. Fertilize it heavy this fall with mineral ferts and then in the spring with CGM or soybean meal. You won't believe the rush in the spring, next year. Bill Hill

Bestlawn, I hope DS means dear spouse, otherwise my post might not make any sense at all. (:
Good luck morpheus, hopefully, like Bill said, we all will have nice lawns by June 2008.
I seed with galaxy KBG this weekend! My DS has surprisingly been very good so far with the dead lawn, and hopefully will be patient as the lawn gets established. I think it will be me who gets more impatient than her!

Midnight is slow to establish, so you are kinda stuck there. I've been reading about the use of seaweed extract to speed establishment though. Most of the articles seem to be about testing on bentgrass, but you might see similar benefits in KBG. Basically, it is all micronutrients and small doses or readily available macronutrients. Apparently it is also a very short term aid to maintaining an even moisture level at the soil's surface. The results seem to indicate an increase in early root formation and subsequently the plants start knitting together faster to form a decent turf. It doesn't seem like a miracle result or anything, but it might be worth a look.

Milorganite, now. If you can do it with a walk-around hand-held whirley spreader. A fast, dirty, mostly-accurate, just get some stuff more or less evenly spread application.

As few footprints as you can.

Hang in there Morph. When the weather cools off, your grass and seedlings should kick into gear. Here are some pics of some seeding I did last year. The seeding was done the first weekend of September and the "after" pics were done Oct 10. This happened to be fescue, but, I've had similar results with KBG in the fall, just add a couple of weeks to the process.

Plant it and it will come! Once the weather cooperates.

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Bestlawn, I hope DS means dear spouse, otherwise my post might not make any sense at all. (:

It does, so it does. :-)

Milorganite. Gotcha. I'll put down a very light bit this weekend--no more than 0.25 lbs of N per thousand as there's no way this lawn needs more yet.

Seaweed extract I'm already using and I've been very happy with the results. The incoming sprouts are darker green than the old lawn was.

Really, I'm feeling pretty good about the whole thing. Seeds are sprouting. The drier/hotter areas are taking longer, just as one would expect, but there's sprout even there. It's just not a great deal yet.

The earliest-sprouted stuff already has three leaves. Some of the objection seems to be that Midnight II looks like a very fine-bladed grass when it starts out. The threads, against soil, are hard to see. It makes areas look like failures that really aren't failing at all.

Some of the objection is that I have to keep the seed bed damp. Taking out the dogs is an exercise in dragging in icky stuff. This is inevitable.

Can you get some more pictures?

My lawn is finally just about 100% dead. If the weather cooperates I am going to mow and rake it between tonight and tommorrow.

Then next week I am going to spread the compost and seed on Labor Day weekend.

Why do you think you got so many weeds? You didnd't till the soil or anything, right? I thoght weeds had their prime growing season in the summer?

Morph

I have a couple question and suggestions. Hope they help.

Are you only using Milorganite?

Why not Alfalfa Pellets/meal or Bradfield?

Alfalfa Pellets/Meal offer NPK and a high availability of trace minerals. They also contain trianconatol, a natural fatty-acid growth stimulant which would be excellent for your sprouts.

I know this is not the same as starting from seed but, I used Alfalfa Pellets @ 50lbs per 1000sqft 2 weeks before I laid S.A in the spring. They worked excellent. My S.A. was fully rooted @ 2 week and thriving to this day. The 4th week I put Bradfield Organics LL @ 20lbs per 1000sqft.

Once watered, the alfalfa will break down and form a light blanket/top dressing over the soil/seed, which should be excellent for your new seeds

Seaweed extract I'm already using and I've been very happy with the results.

Are you using it as a foliar feeding?

If so I would wait until your lawn fills in before using it again. Foliar feeding is not doing much for your soil, which is where your focus should be right now. Seaweed meal spread on the soil would be more beneficial right now.

I say mix it up a little, it can't hurt.

Why do you think you got so many weeds? You didnd't till the soil or anything, right?

Opportunistic little suckers. They flourish in damp and bright conditions, and that's what I'm giving them.

100,000 / 7000 square feet = 14 per square foot. Compared to the several thousand grass sprouts per square foot, that's nothing. Of course, they grow faster than the lawn does. Opportunists.

Most won't survive the first mow, most of the remainder won't survive frost.

Why not Alfalfa Pellets/meal or Bradfield?

I dropped alfalfa on the lawn on July 20th, so that's in play but starting to fade out in the ultra-damp conditions.

Mixing it up a little sounds good. :-)