Does anyone have any advice on what to mix in soil for seeding a fescue lawn? It's classic hard packed clay with not an earthworm in sight. We aren't bothering to aerate but are tilling the whole thing up. I have no compost, it's a new house so haven't collected anything. Anyhow, we are starting with a small enough area that we can still do the home depot bags of amendments, it's borderline cost wise to bring in truckloads, so if you were buying bags of materials, what would it be?

So far we have natures helper vs bark nuggets, do we use manure? Lime, I wanted zeolite but it costs the earth...

I'm such a big fan of compost that I am lost without it. Any advice on what to add to clay would be appreciated.