I also think I had some fungus/brown spots last year to compound the barespots

You don't need to come to the States to get organic fertilizer. I use alfalfa pellets, but you can undoubtedly get soybean meal by the truckload in your area. Check with your local feed store. It should come in 50 pound (or 20 kilo) bags. Application rate is 15 pounds per 1,000 square feet (7 kilos per 100 square meters).

What is your watering schedule? How often and for how long do you water?

A sprinkler is proper watering. A hose by itself is not proper watering. After 40 years of experimenting with sprinklers, I have finally settled on a turbo oscillator for the best and most reliable coverage. It's slow to apply, but that is fine. Mine takes 8 hours to get an inch of water out.

I would not add topsoil. Your hard soil can be fixed. If you add topsoil that will change your drainage and usually not for the better. Start to fix it by spraying with any clear shampoo at a rate of 3 ounces of shampoo per 1,000 square feet. Then water that in. When it starts to pool or run off, stop watering and let it soak in for 15 minutes. Then resume watering. Repeat until you get an inch. Deep watering will generate deep roots which sets up the turf to maximize the benefit from every rainstorm. I have not watered my lawn (in Texas) yet this year. It has rained almost 2 inches every month so far, so that's why, but the deep roots make it possible to go much longer without watering.

This is great advice thank you. I really appreciate the efforts you put in sharing your experiences!

See if I can answer everything.

I will definitely look up some feed stores, I'm not too far from farmland. I have been doing some reading since you suggested it on soybean meal, I greatly appreciate you suggesting the application rate.

I have started to experiment with baby shampoo as a soil conditioner, I got about half my front lawn done. I will try some more this weekend when I can get out there in the morning. I was applying about 3oz/1000 with a hose end sprayer but just kind of leaving it. So I am clear, you suggest I water it in deeper directly after applying?

Last year I started paying attention to rainfall, so I would add how many mm of water we would get from rain a week and then top up the difference with an oscillating sprinkler to total 1 inch per week. I have a long way to go on this. I have a garden/flowering crab in the middle of my lawn so I need to move the sprinkler around 4 times to cover just the front. I am seriously considering investing in proper inground irrigation next spring as this has just not been practical for me. I leave early for work and get home late and last year - I was occasionally watering around 5 or 6 pm and I caused some fungi problems. I read your posts about watering that one inch in one sitting and I am trying to come up with some way to accomplish this as it sounds like a great plan, but challenging to implement. This year, other than the areas I seeded (just to get something other than weeds in the patchy spots of the good side), I haven't watered I've been averaging about 3/4 of water from rain a week, and it's been quite cool here so far this year.

As for the poor side of my yard, those dead patches literally seem lifeless to me, weeds aren't even filling them in only the occasional week one pops it's head up. That's why I wanted to add some triple mix in to get compost in those areas. It's just so dead and I don't know why, it's a low traffic area so it shouldn't really be compacted. The triple mix really rejuvenated the better side of my yard, there is life in the soil again. My inexperienced gut is telling me fix the soil, the soil is preventing the grass from thriving. But I'm. Obviously here looking for real experience (like yours) to help!

Thank you again.

Any time you don't see good effect from fertilization you are using, it is a good time to get a proper soil test. Is your lawn in a newer development? Could be your soil is just really crappy and top soil might be just a thin layer. Also, if you stick with Scott's 4 step program, you will not see the best results. Most of your fertilization efforts need to be in the fall.

Milorganite used to be great with high iron content. Now? Not so much. Soybean meal is a good, inexpensive replacement. Not sure what your pricing is but maybe soybean meal prices will go down now that the Chinese are not buying American soybeans.

Lastly, it is still a little early to see good results. My lawn is just starting to wake up. Toronto is a good 5-10 degrees F colder.

Good stuff from mishmosh. It could be a chemical imbalance. I tend to think in terms of biological imbalance, but someone may have previously overdosed the area with, say, Epsom salts trying to green up some plant that lived there. That magnesium in the Epsom salts and harden the soil. The soil chemistry test would tell you that. If you have tried chemical fertilizer and organic fertilizer and nothing grows, there must be a reason.

Finding 8 hours to water is a challenge. I bought an Orbit digital timer that fits on my faucet and set it to finish watering about when I was leaving the house in the morning. That way I could tell if everything was wet and I could turn it off if it hung up. I found an app for my phone called Rainlogger. I enter the amount of rain and it logs the time and date. You can see graphs daily, weekly, monthly, and annually. With that and a rain gauge I am finally not guessing about when it rained and how much.

Watering in the shampoo is not critical. I do it or apply with a lot of water.

Here are your feed stores. Some are pet stores and some are on the other side of Toronto from you (I don't know where you are but they are everywhere). Call first to get pricing and availability. Here in Texas we don't grow soybeans, so the cost is about $1 per pound, which is way more than I want to pay for fertilizer. Since Canada grows so much soybeans, your shipping prices are going to be much lower and hence the lower price.

The Chinese might be buying Canadian soybeans, so you never know.

Very great advice guys and huge help!

My house was built in 1975, to my knowledge the lawn is the original. The previous home owners made some bad decisions over the years, so I don't even what to know what they did or didn't do to the lawn.

Speaking of Epsom salts, you do bring up a very good point, those bad areas are semi close to the road, and the snow plow driver clearly hates me as he really loads up along that side. I partially ignored that as being an issue because 3-7 feet from curb is where the ground is in the worst (the snow is generally piled against the curb). Maybe there is some microclimate happening from the curb that has helped mimize the salt damage for the first few feet of the lawn . The piles could easily runoff when they melt effecting the areas farther from the road. I'll take some perspective photos tonight of it.

I was considering looking into this as a fertilizer option of the soybean meal is cost prohibitve, but I cannot tell if this is a lame marketing gimmick or something worth looking into:
https://www.scotts.com/en-ca/products/lawn-food/scotts-turf-builder-root-trients-lawn-food-27-0-4

Our fertilizer selection is pretty bleak, my local garden stores have their own special synthetic mix but other than that it's pretty much only scotts general purpose available. It sucks (the scotts 4 step doesn't even exist here its crazy). One thing is forsure that area of lawn has not responded for at least 2 years to fertilizer applications.

I have been trying to find a local company to provide a soil test report, we unfortunately don't have the local extensions you guys have, I did manage to find a company within driving distance so I think I should be making this a priority again if costing isn't outrageous.

As for watering, do you leave your hose elevated off the lawn for the 8 hours? I'm worried about burning the lawn leaving the hose across it.

Is it common for pet feed stores to carry soybean? I'll get on the horn later today to start finding prices.

Hopefully I'm not forgetting anything - thank very much for all the knowledge being shared!

That's pretty old. I would think your soil would be pretty good. Much of the GTA was built on farmland.

again, fall is the key time to fertilize. 3 applications from August through November would be about right. id recommend the later two to be synthetic as the temperatures dip. for spring/summer, late may and early July are good times. of course, organic fertilizer can really be put down any time and with almost any frequency. in ne ohio, a 50# bag of soybean meal is about $18 US$ just for reference. i get it at a feed store that supplies farms and homeowners--selling things like fertilizers (branded and also generic potash, phosphorus, urea, etc) and animal (dogs, cats, horses, pigs, rabbits, etc) feed. hopefully you can find something like that in more rural areas near GTA.

As for watering, you hopefully won't have to do it often. leaving the hose on the grass while you water is not a problem.

Hose on the lawn is no problem. I have hoses on each spigot and leave some of them out for weeks at a time without moving.

If not soybean meal, then alfalfa pellets (Purina Rabbit Chow) are good. If your lawn has not responded to chemical fertilizer, then definitely try organic. If, after 3 full weeks, it has not turned deep green, then seriously consider the soil test. Organic fertilizers are kind of funny. After 2 weeks you will see absolutely no hint that it is working. Then at 3 weeks, SUDDENLY, it's all deep green. It happens overnight - just not the night after you apply it.

Sometimes they will use magnesium chloride to deice roads. It is a liquid, but can accumulate and be thrown onto the yards. If you get a soil test, watch for an imbalance of magnesium. Too much is not good. Logan Labs, in Ohio, is an excellent soil test lab. Get the $25 test and post your results here. There is another very good lawn forum where they do Logan Labs soil test interpretations.