New to lawn care- Please Help

[joedogs]

HELP PLEASE!!
I live just outside of St. Louis Missouri so we have hot summers and cold winters. My new house came with a lawn that has weeds, crabgrass, mole problems, some bare spots, different kinds of grass, everything you can think of. Everything I read contradicts something else I read.

All I want to know is if i was going to put 3 to 4 applications down what should they be and when should they be applied? ( I mean exactly which bag do I buy). I would like to spend less than $100 if possible, my yard is small too. I guess I need to put fertilizer down (what kind and when) Seed at some point(what kind and when)?
I have a walk behind scotts spreader.

I just want to give my lawn a chance to improve.
Any help is greatly appreciated.

[betmr]

There is a very simple solution to your question that few home owners consider, Take a soil test. Contact your local extention agency to get a sample kit and have your soil tested. The results will tell you exactly what you need to do. If you need to adjust the ph, or what nutrients you need. All these 3 & 4 or what ever, STEP programs are designed for one thing, "to sell you STUFF". So how much STUFF do you need? only a soil test can tell you that. Too much STUFF can be a very bad thing. So anyone who comes on here and tells you which program is right for you, is not helping you. Heck we don't even know what your soil looks like, and even if we did, we can't see the ph or nutrient content.

What is right for your soil, may not be what's right for the guy down the street, Heck your back yard might even be different than the front. Get the soil test $10 - $20 bucks money very well spent.

I get these Lawn Chem Co.s comming by, leaving these door knob hangers at my house all the time, telling me what my lawn needs, yet none of them has ever tested my SOIL, I wonder? How do they know, can they see my ph through the grass?

Get the test, it will tell you everything you need to know.

Hope this was a help to you.

[Smallaxe]

Soil tests can be useful, but at the same time there are very few soils that can't grow grass at least reasonably well. Usually the bad lawns got that way from too much water, too often, or too little wter, during a drought which caused some dieback.

You say you have crabgrass and weeds and barespots. Is there crabgrass [CG] green and growing already for you?? The dead CG is never coming back - any new CG you get will come from seed.

I would clean up the lawn, put down some common seed blend in your area, and cover with compost for better germination. The compost is going to be the best thing you can do for your soil. No matter what kind of pH, micro-macro nutrient deficiency, clay, sand , whatever, the compost is going to do more... on one good application - than any amount of NPK.

Your lawn this spring should at least be green with more grass and fewer weeds, once it germinates and grows. Do you know what is involved in ensuring a good germination?

On the other hand - If you pre-m now instead of seed you will still have all the bare spots you see now, plus the others that are under the dead CG.

As soon as your new grass is growing well you should still have time to get a pre-m down to prevent new CG infestation. Here in Wisco it has to get real hot b4 the stuff will even germinate. We sow the grass thick - cut it high - so the CG never finds an opportunity to germinate in that environment.