Photos do help! Could you?

Yes, sorry!

Three photos attached. One is more or less the entire lawn, and the other two are close ups. You can see the gravel/rocks in both close up pictures. It is like that all over the yard. You can also see in the closer pictures that a majority of the green comes from weeds not grass.

OK, let's start from the beginning now that I see this.

Irrigation is pretty optional, but if you do it (I don't), it should be deep and infrequent. Optimally, if the soil and lawn can deal with it, 1" at a time, once a week. Shallower soils and poorer lawns may need a little less every 5 days, and that sounds like it should be the case with yours, if you choose to water.

Again, it's optional as to whether you do or do not. Northern lawns (I forgot to ask for your city and state, but that's a northern lawn from the looks) do fine without for the most part.

Feeding is not optional for a good looking lawn, but the traditional bag-listed schedule is completely wrong--it's there for the best profit of the lawn company, not the health of the lawn.

Feed on Memorial Day, Labor Day (good timing on this post), October 1, and when the lawn stops growing for the year (usually November sometime) and you do the last mow.

That last can be a little hard to nail down, so we're content to just get close. Reasonably close. Give or take. Growth is no great shakes in November anyway. :-) For me in eastern PA, I tend to drop around November 15-November 30, but growth can and has continued into December if it warms again, and I've had to cut one last time. That's not a problem.

Use any good fertilizer you like at bag rate. Barring a soil test (more later), choose a fertilizer that's either organic (for any feeding except November when it's too cold), or a synthetic with a high first number (all feedings, plus that November one if you go organic) and low second and third numbers. The first number is nitrogen. Barring a soil test, there's no sense in throwing the other two at the soil if you don't know you need them.

For rockier, thinner soils, I might suggest the organic if you aren't put off by the greater cost and heavier materials. Milorganite (big box store) or soybean meal (grain mill or farmer's co-op, and much cheaper) are two good alternatives. Milo at bag rate or soy at 15 pounds per thousand square feet (Scott's broadcast spreader...about #8 to start and work from there, give or take a ton) work wonders, but they are not fast fertilizers and you won't see a change overnight.

I use organics myself. This year, with the COVID thingy, I'm hybridizing and using a mix. I just did my feeding on Sunday, a tad early but close enough.

A soil test (via Logan Labs) can nail down if your soil is short on resources. Hint: yours probably is. That tends to be at the hobbyist level, but a rebalance once isn't necessarily a bad idea just to get things into the proper ballpark, and at $20, the standard test does keep you from constantly wondering why the grass looks bad--or using things that don't work and wondering why they don't.

The rocks aren't, per se, a problem. And the thinnest areas are where I would expect--at the edges and borders of things, where grass has trouble growing. Better feeding will help.

Also, search the forum for the use of shampoo or sodium laurel sulfate or sodium laureth sulfate. Seriously. Sprayed, that stuff will help loosen the soil. Although, again, it works best on soils that have had their resources balanced after a soil test. It won't dissolve rocks, but it does help the roots work through the soil and, hopefully, move past the rocks.

You can't change the rocks or move the rocks and you can't really add soil atop the rocks without altering the runoff of the property (a really bad idea), but let's try to make the rocks matter a little less.

Thank you! The closest major city is St. Louis, MO to give you an idea of climate. Turf type tall fescue. I had a soil test done previously and you were nice enough to post a recommended fertilizer schedule HERE.

I followed your recommendations for a few years then life got in the way. This is the first year that I hired a company to handle fertilizing/weed control. Needless to say I am less than impressed with the results and will not continue using them going forward.

I have an irrigation system which I use for deep infrequent watering, but there are some sites in the lawn that just never do well. I am curious if the soil is just too thin and there is underlying concerte so the roots have nowhere to go.

I may be late to the party, but given that a majority of the lawn is weeds, bare soil/rock, and a relatively small space does it make sense to kill it off and start from scratch? My initial plan was just: dethatching, core aeration, reseed and fertilize.

Would you recommend starting over completely? Do I even have enough time this year? If so, when would I use the Shampoo (detailed information HERE for anyone that is curious).

Would this be an appropriate sequence of events:

1. Kill existing lawn
2. Mow lowest setting
3. Dethatch
4. Mow and bag clippings
5. Core aerate
6. Add top soil?
7. (Shampoo here?)
8. Reseed
9. Fertilize

Am I jumping to the 'nuclear option' when other intermediate steps would be better?

Even if you did jack nothing, your soil wasn't that bad to begin with. Since you paid for the test, you got the Patented Eric Read To Bring You To Optimal (Eric is my real name and, if you put it in a pentagram with some Werther's Original candies and some really expensive Sennelier acrylic paints that I need, you can summon me by daylight).

So anything you added helped. If you want to get a new read in the future, go for it and we'll resynchronize. If not, not. I'm hopeful some of the potassium went down, but the lawn can live without it if necessary.

Edit this paragraph: Cancel that fertlizer, I changed my mind. Let's go with 20-20-20 or 10-10-10, one of which should be available at any good big box store. You could use the potassium and the phosphorus this year.

The nuclear option isn't really necessary here at this time. Let's try something a little less...radioactive. It's late in the year to think about a full reno in MO anyway (seriously, it should have been started on August first with the kill off, and seed down on August 15th or so when the days started to cool).

Any time you want, use Ortho Weed B Gon Chickweed Clover and Oxalis and spray the weeds.

The first time? Blanket spray if you want using a hose-end sprayer or the Weed B Gon Chickweed, Clover, and Oxalis that you simply attach to the hose. That's fine. You do have a lot of weeds. Or buy the concentrate (as below) and a hose-end sprayer (about $15).

After that, I'd use a two-gallon sprayer (about $10-$20) and the concentrate bottle and mix it 2 gallons at a time. Spot spray weeds as you see them.

Keep feeding the lawn appropriately and the bluegrasses in it will fill in, reducing the space where the weeds have to grow. Eventually? Fewer weeds. Then far fewer. Then almost no weeds. Then, like me, maybe 2 or 3 weeds a year.

If things haven't improved somewhat by next year, we'll discuss overseeding.

Thanks for talking me off of the ledge.

For the fertilizer are you saying don't use the starter fertilizer, and do 20-20-20 or 10-10-10 at the same recommended timeline instead?

Yes, on the Memorial Day, Labor Day, October 1, and November 1 (if you can fit that in near St. Louis) timeline.

This is going to be a rare exception and I'm going to recommend application of 10 pounds of 10-10-10 per thousand square feet, or 5 pounds of 20-20-20 per thousand square feet.

(If you work the math, that's 1 pound of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium per thousand square feet).

I have my doubts on that last November application, personally. Winter comes awful early for you guys, so if the last mow is before November first and the lawn is going dormant, skip the feeding. It's no big deal. If the lawn still looks green and the ground isn't frozen, you can apply it.

For that last app, I'd rather see you use something high in nitrogen (the first number) and low in the other two, but if you have to, use the fertilizer you have on-hand. Erosion and P ending up in water sources is an issue with higher phosphorus fertilizer in late fall (the middle number), but don't seem to be of vast concern with the property I'm seeing in the photos.

I have rocky soil at this house. My wife digs all the holes, and she hates it. I think it comes with Texas geology. I stick to the surface and don't really have a problem with it.

For the areas in the lawn that seem to suffer most, you might check your sprinklers by putting cat food or tuna cans around to see how the sprinkler(s) fill them. Turn on the sprinklers for an hour or so and see if the cans are all filling evenly. If not you might need to adjust some sprinkler heads.

I would second morph's tepid recommendation for organic fertilizer. I've never done a soil test, but organic fertilizers really do work for me. I am also very convinced that shampoo helps to improve the soil. My wife has always been skeptical of my mystical approach to gardening (AKA organics), but she even bought a bottle of shampoo for herself to use in her flower, veggie beds, and pots.

Morpheuspa you have the patience of a saint. Please bear with me for another clarification. When you say 10lbs of 10-10-10 is that per season (2.5lbs/1k sqft at Memorial Day, Labor Day, October 1 and Nov 1) or 10lbs/ 1k sqft per application? For reference my yard is ~4,500sqft measured.

Thanks dchall, I recently did that and did find some areas that may need adjustment. I used 3 cans spread out in different spots and found one location was very different (low). However, I was surprised that even in the spot that collected the most water in a half hour I only got 1/4" of water collected. There are 4 sprinkler heads (one in each corner) that have crossing patterns so I was a little shocked that it would take ~2hrs to get a full inch.

"Morpheuspa you have the patience of a saint."

No. No I don't. I have the patience of a saint when being treated pleasantly. Get snippy or throw insults and I have the patience of a two-year-old waiting for ice cream. :-) But that's not in any danger of happening here, and why I'm never, ever in any field that requires much customer service...

That would be per application, so 10 pounds of 10-10-10 per thousand square feet on Memorial Day. And again 10 pounds of 10-10-10 per thousand square feet, on Labor Day. And so on.

Or you can use 5 pounds of 20-20-20 per thousand square feet instead.

Or, as David noted above, my tepid note of using an organic. So bag rate (or even half again above bag rate) of Milorganite for each application--except the November app where it's too cold for Milorganite to work properly. In your case, I am more tepid this year because of the minor P and K shortages on your test and wouldn't mind a few shots of that going down yet.

This gets really complicated if you mix the two (and I do this frequently, particularly this year). I won't go into it unless you're interested.

And yep, our watering systems always tend to lay down less water than we think they do. :-) Mine need three full hours to drop an inch of water. That's actually a good thing as it assures that the soil has ample time to absorb it without any runoff or flooding, even in the worst conditions where the soil may be refusing to damp down initially.

My oscillator on full sweep takes 8 hours to get an inch. We are allowed 6 hours per week with our watering restrictions. Even our most reliable springs are drying up this year.

Okay, I did some research at the local big box stores. I found some 10-10-10 but it only gave spreading guidelines for gardens. I couldn't find any 20-20-20. The closest thing (and not even that close) was a Lesco starter fertilizer but that was 18-24-12.

My concern with the 10-10-10 is flying blind with no spreader setting guidelines and burning the lawn or not spreading at the proper rate. Would it be sufficient to stick with the starter fertilizer or Milorganite at bag rate for the remaining feedings this year (sans the Nov feeding if using Milorganite per your comment above)?

Yes, I'll give an OK for either of those. The Lesco starter is actually within range for a "balanced" fertilizer, so that would be great.

For the November app, just use a high-nitrogen fertilizer (35-0-5, 27-0-3, 28-2-3, something that looks a little like that, those were just random numbers). They tend to be cheaper overall anyway, and they're also good for any of the other feedings if you have it leftover.

Following up on this from last year. Keeping the same thread so all of the background information is readily available.

My back and side yards continue to do really well. The front has come a long way, but still room for improvement. I am hoping to get some input on timing and process of overseeding the front this year. I missed the labor day fertilizer application as we were out of town, but want to make sure I time seeding correctly. For context the closest major city is St. Louis, MO and I have Tall Fescue.

Both yards get the same amount of fertilizer, and irrigation, but as you can see have fairly different results.

Here are a few pictures for context. The first is the back yard.

Followed by the front:

One other area of concern is a small section between the sidewalk and road that seems to have died. I am not sure if this is diseased or what. The sprinklers hit this area, but I am not sure what happened here, maybe it got too wet and diseased?

Thanks for following up..

If the choices were too wet or too dry, which would you pick and why? If you do a tuna can challenge, the to put some cans in the weak looking spots.

Thanks for the reply. It is hard to say, let me explain. That area while it doesn't get great coverage from our irrigation system, is right in the path of our sump pump drainage system. That pump runs fairly often and the ground in that area can become oversaturated. So it is hard to determine how much water it actually gets as a lot of the water from the drain would be subsurface.

If you can stick a screwdriver into the ground fairly easily, then it likely does not need to be watered.