First, I would suggest you take the 'advice' given by the garden center with a large grain of salt! In most cases, unless they have a trained horticulturist on staff, garden center employees have minimal knowledge or experience in lawn care - they are (hopefully) experienced with plants......but not turf grasses!! They may sell seeds or fertilizers or pesticides for lawn care, but then selling garden products is what they are all about......whether you need them or not!!

Second, it would helpful to know what sort of seed you used and how the seed bed was prepared. That can make a big difference in the seed germination rate and how well the germinated seed develops.

Generally, the cooler the temperatures are, the less water is needed as it is much slower to evaporate. And you will want to consider the amount of rainfall you receive as well. If it is dry, you need to water :-) Temperatures really have no bearing......it rains throughout winter doesn't it??

Thanks gardengal! We used a sunny mix - Kentucky bluegrass, fescue and rye. Cool season for our zone 5. Our soil is sandy, a former cornfield and as far as being prepared, it was harley raked and (supposedly) new lawn starter fertilizer put down. We did have some pretty hot weather when it was seeded in the middle of August, but I was pretty diligent about watering. It's growing, just though I would be mowing by now.

Did you roll the seed down to make good contact with the underlying soil/sand?

What do you mean by diligent about watering? How often and for how long did you water for the three weeks following the seeding? Did you slack off with the watering before 3 weeks was up?

No, the seed was not rolled over, but was covered with straw and I watered twice a day. I kept it moist and it germinated with no problem. My concern is the height. I'm still watering and I have fertilized with new starter fertilizer twice.

I hate to sound redundant, but you were not quite clear to me. Did you water it twice a day for 3 full weeks or did you back off before the 3 weeks were up? I think you're saying you did continue for the 3 weeks. I'm trying to determine if you have rye, fescue, or Kentucky bluegrass, or some mix of the three. Rye will germinate in a week. Fescue takes 2 weeks, and KBG takes 3 weeks of continual, twice or thrice a day, light watering.

Does the germination seem to have full coverage? Is it really dense, somewhat sparse or happy medium?

This could get back to the heat of August being the problem. I would have waited until later in Sept to do the first seeding in your area. At least you got it on the proper side of summer. I'm not a believer in straw, but I know you can't start a lawn in Indiana without straw - it must be a law or something.

I agree it should be mowing height by now. At this point I would not try to force feed it any more. If anything I would use an organic fertilizer like soybean meal, alfalfa pellets, corn meal, or Milorganite. The application rate for any of those is 15 pounds per 1,000 square feet. Corn meal or corn gluten meal is likely to be the cheapest by far for you. Of those two, corn gluten meal is a much better fertilizer. Being organic grain type fertilizers these materials take 3 full weeks to see any improvement, so don't expect a lot for this year. As long as you have plenty of living grass plants, you should make it to spring and we can go from there.

thin areas.

Thanks for the info! Yes, I have decreased watering to about 2 X per week, since we haven't had much rain and I wanted to water in the fertilizer. Our home is new construction. Been in for about 4 months. I wonder if all the excavating had something to do with it?

The construction could have something to do with it. Again, organic fertilizer works much better to restore the health of the soil than anything else, including compost or peat moss. Plus organic fertilizer is a lot less expensive than either alternative. You might try a couple doses of organics this fall/winter. Then in about April, take a soil sample and send it to Logan Labs. Post the results here for some help reading their results. You need the $25 test. LL gives a much more complete and reliable result than state college test labs. It is one thing to get the biology right, but fixing the chemistry can also help the biology to thrive.

Thanks again for the great information! The garden center told me to use the new lawn starter again, but I think I'm going with the milorganite.