You're going to have to forget everything you think you know about lawn care and start over.

I had to do that and it took years of reading here and other lawn care forums.

First, return the Scott's Turf Builder Bonus S and get your money back.

Second, call several of these feed stores and check the price of alfalfa pellets (Rabbit Chow) and ORDINARY corn meal, not corn gluten meal. Pellets should be under $15 and corn should be under $10 for a 50-pound bag. Decide which one has the best prices for products in stock and visit them. Determine your lawn size and calculate how much alfalfa and/or corn you will need to cover it all at a rate of 20 pounds per 1,000 square feet. As you apply that amount is not going to seem to be enough, but it is. You can always apply more later if you miss a spot. There is never any harm in overdoing the amount of these products. As you are calling, you might ask if they have Hou-Actinite in bags. That is a product that can be spread easily with a spreader. Corn and alfalfa are harder to apply with a spreader. All these products work well for the orchard, bushes, and flowers. My Knock-Out roses are so dense they form a hedge. App rate for shrubs is 1 handful per month per shrub. For trees use the square footage under the canopy per tree, 3x per year.

If you have a St Augustine lawn, wait until May to apply. If you have bermuda, apply the stuff now. On bermuda you can/should apply every month. With St Augustine you can apply in May, September, and Thanksgiving.

Spectracide makes products for weeds and insects. What product are you talking about?

Don't assume you're going to get insects and treat the yard. That is the wrong approach. Wait until July and check to see if you have insects. I lived in San Antonio for 35 years and never once needed to treat the lawn for insects. If the Spectracide you applied was for insects, then it could not be worse for bees. What insects are you worried about invading your home? Again, 35 years in SA and never sprayed around the house.

Weed control depends on what kind of grass you have. Products suitable for bermuda will kill St Augustine, and to some extent, vice versa. Let us know what grass you have for more info. Now is the time to spot spray weeds, so hurry back. Spot spraying minimizes the environmental effect.

When you write back please tell us your watering schedule. How often and for how long do you water? And what kind of watering system or sprinklers do you have?

I tend to also recommend checking prices for cottonseed meal and soybean meal. The reason being, both are heavy-hitters for protein (nitrogen, essentially), which the lawn needs for a well-rounded dinner.

While they tend to be a bit pricier ($15 for 50 pounds for soy in my area), I use 15 pounds per thousand square feet per feeding to deliver the equivalency of 1 pound of nitrogen per thousand square feet.

I have Kentucky bluegrass. Hungry, voracious, eternally food-seeking bluegrass. It looks great fed four times a year on that stuff, to the tune of $60.

Cottonseed meal packs the identical punch, but tends to be available in areas where soy is not, and vice-versa.

Sure go ahead and ask about those. I'm thinking they are unavailable at feed stores in Texas despite processing so much cotton in the state.

Thank you both for your feedback! In regards to the type of grass, we have St. Augustine. As for watering schedule, it doesn't exist. 😬 We have several trees in the front yard (around 10) and grass doesn't grow in the area that is heavily shaded. I water 1-2 times a week in the summer either early morning or after 6 pm but that is about it. We do not have a sprinkler system so I manually water with either the hand held sprinkler head attachment or I will use the two pulsator sprinklers we have.

I have used Spectracide Triazicide granules for insects. We have dogs who are in and out a lot, so I would put down the granules 1x a month in the evening (dogs locked inside for remainder of the night) for silverfish, fleas, ticks, spiders, and roaches. I spray the perimeter of the home monthly with ortho home defense for the same suspects. I am very much open to suggestions but I must admit that moving away, particularly from spraying the perimeter, will be difficult. I have had lots of success with the insect products I use, but I also want to be conscious of the bugs I do not wish to kill.

...but I also want to be conscious of the bugs I do not wish to kill.

Soil health depends on the health of the insect population. The biology in the soil includes bacteria, fungi, microscopic insects (microarthropods), as well as other microbes. When you use insecticide on a monthly basis it will kill all the microarthropods and keep them killed. This is not a perfect analogy but consider killing all the birds and reptiles in the world. Your garden needs insects to do what Mother Nature put them there to do.

Once you stop using insecticides and start using only organic fertilizer, you will see a return of insects to the yard. You will also see the return of toads, lizards, and birds which will keep the population of insects under control without your help. You might even add some features to ensure you have plenty of predators. A bird feeder and a bird bath will get you started. But they will not come to eat poisoned insects. The switch to organics changes everything, especially if you can minimize the use of fungicide, insecticide, and herbicide.

Go ahead and keep spraying your perimeter of the house if you like. That will have minimal impact on the rest of the garden.

As for watering, I used to live on an acre with 14,500 square feet of lawn area. I had 4 oscillator sprinklers I could use. I used them 2 at a time or else the water pressure would fall too much to water anything. I like the modern, turbo-type oscillators because they don't break right away and they water extremely evenly.

Watering: Deep and infrequent is the mantra for watering. This is for all turf grass all over the place. Deep means 1 inch all at one time. Put some cat food or tuna cans around the yard, and time how long it takes your sprinkler(s) to fill all the cans. Memorize that time. That will be the time you water from now on. My hose, oscillator sprinkler (full sweep) and water pressure takes 8 full hours to fill the cans. Your time will likely be less. I like gentle watering. As for watering frequency, that depends on the daytime air temperature. With temps in the 90s, deep water once per week. With temps in the 80s, deep water once every 2 weeks. With temps in the 70s, deep water once every 3 weeks. With temps below 70, deep water once a month. Note that you have to keep up with quickly changing temps in the spring and fall. This deep and infrequent schedule works in Phoenix and for the most part, in Vermont, so it should work for you. Make adjustments depending on your humidity and shade. The reason for deep and infrequent is to grow deeper, more drought resistant roots and to allow the soil to dry completely at the surface for several days before watering again. If it rains, reset your calendar to account for the rainfall.

Mowing: Always mow St Augustine at the mower's highest setting. There is never a good reason to lower the deck for St Augustine. It does not need a scalp in the spring or fall.

Organic Fertilizer: You can use organics any day, or every day, of the year. MorpheusPA experimented with overdosing organic fertilizer a few years ago and found he could not do it. He fertilized heavily every week with multiple products. I followed up on his experience with a monthly dose of corn gluten meal, which is far more than anyone needs. My lawn was incredible that year. So that's pretty good news. You can fertilize up to your budget and not worry about killing anything. The suggestion to apply at 20 pounds per 1,000 square feet, 3x per year (May, Sept, Thanksgiving), should get you through. If you wanted to fertilize additionally on Washington's Birthday and 4th of July, that would not hurt anything.

" MorpheusPA experimented with overdosing organic fertilizer a few years ago and found he could not do it."

No, but I could overdo it. At 1,300 pounds per thousand square feet per season--a grand total of well over thirteen thousand pounds over the course of that season, I was quite sore for many months.

That was a grand total of 37 pounds of nitrogen per thousand square feet equivalent. If you did that synthetically, you just killed the lawn and sterilized the soil for a good number of years until it watered out and the salt balance went back to normal.

Organically? I was mowing every other to every third day to keep up with it--which meant I was then recycling yet more organic material right back onto the lawn with every mow. Which meant yet more growth. It was like living in the jungle. A dark green, Kentucky-bluegrass-dominated jungle.

All this included the gardens, which I feed organically as well, and still do--at a much higher rate, during the summer season, than the lawn, actually. I grow flowers.

...the point being...the excess fertilizer did not kill the lawn like an accidental overdose of chemical fertilizer might. Way back in about ought five, there was a member here who wrote to me personally. He was frantic because he opened his bag of corn meal and immediately dumped it over spilling a pile of it on his golf course. I calmed him as best I could and suggested all was okay. Simply sweep up what you can and leave what you cannot sweep up. Of course all was well. As long as you don't smother the grass with a pile of food, it should be fine.

I did have an issue with spilled Milo. That was a slight problem due to the fact that, although organic, it does have some fast nitrogen.

So there are considerations. I burned the lawn in that area.

Corn, alfalfa, soy...no. Milo...yes. Blood meal, oh, heck yes. I learned a lesson that day with the Milo, I can tell you that one...

I try to avoid discussion of blood meal. At most it could be used as an additive to other organics. I'd use no more than 5 pounds blended into 50 pounds of something else. Blood is more fast acting, so if you really need a fast green up, blending it with something else should do it.

Thank you guys again for your feedback! We really do appreciate it! I did have another question in regards to spot treatment of weeds. What do you recommend for this? I have used a mixture of vinegar, water, and dish soap, but have had little success with this. What are your suggestions? We have several different types of weeds including dollarweed, burweed, crabgrass, sandburs, and clovers among a few I could not ID.

When you say you want to transition to organic, what does that mean to you? Being organic is like being vegetarian - there are different degrees of each. Nobody is coming to your garden to ensure you have been 100% organic for 5 years or anything like that. What I have found is that there are no selective organic herbicides, insecticides, or fungicides. There are good practices and some pretty good approaches to all the problems leading to the use of -icides, but if you really need one, then you really need one. In the case of St Augustine, there is one herbicide which works to simply do the job entirely. That herbicide is atrazine. Atrazine is the direct opposite of organic. I'm sure it causes cancer in rats in some countries. The good news is that one application will take out all the weeds, all of them, once and for all, forever. Weeds like the dreaded poa annua will disappear. Horse herb, a common Texas pest, disappears forever. Now having said that, if you get a thin spot in St Augustine, some weeds might take hold while the St Aug is thinned out and you may have to spot spray the following year (April/NOW). If you spray today you will see no changes for a week or two. By then you will have forgotten you sprayed. Then, SUDDENLY (!), in 3 weeks you'll notice there are no weeds in the yard and the grass looks great.

So your choices are to pick out all the weeds by hand or spray once and get it done. Once the weeds are out, then return to your organic program with confidence.

Atrazine products generally have purple labels, but be careful, RoundUp has some products with purple labels which are not atrazine. Here's the one I use. I like the hose attach and the white flow valve control.

Not that. Vinegar--horticultural vinegar--might work. But frankly, I never recommend it unless you also know to wear your PPE with it, which includes gloves and rear-venting eye protection. Get even a bit of blowback-spray from that crap in your eye and enjoy the cornea replacement surgery you're going to need. It's vile. I'd use the same protection I use for pure lye--which I'm sure as heck not using out in the open in the wind.

There's a reason we invented sensible chemical controls and this is, frankly, it. I've used organic methodology to encourage my lawn to spread and grow to extreme limits, and I now get very few weeds. The few I get I treat with the least-toxic components available.

Most things respond to Tenacity, which is an extract derived from bottlebrush weeds. Seriously, they should erect gold statues to the scientists who came up with this stuff.

There's a reason Tenacity gets the least-toxic label.

It's not cheap, but a bottle lasts ages (I'm still running on the one I bought years ago), and a tiny spray takes out a weed. Check your lawn's tolerance for it before using, of course.

Other than that, use the right chemical for the right job at the correct amount at the right time in the proper spots where you have a problem and you are being responsible. Most people toss around Weed and Feed like it's going out of style.

Don't get me started. You wouldn't like me when I get started.

Most things are best applied in the evening when you're not going to be exposing insects--particularly bees--to the direct spray, and the chemistry has time to soak in overnight before insects will be feeding the next day.