Question
I will try to be breif. My lawn has history of weeds and bugs. I uses Franks weed and seed and now have holes in lawn ( burned lawn). What grass seed works best. People said if I use annual grass seed it won't last next year and couldn't believe it? What grass seed and weed killer and insect killer should i use to get grass back in shape? I especially need to know which is best grass seed for four season lawn. I live on east coast . Its mostly sun , some shade. Thanks so much.  

Answer
Hi Eric;
If you use the weed and feeds, no seed will germinate. That is what they do, keep seeds from germinating.They alse keep bulbs from producing.
I wouldn't touch em with a ten foot pole, even when I was using chemical fertilizers.
Rye grasses are cool season grasses, and will go dormant when the temperature hits about 85 to 90. there is annual rye and perineal rye. the annual rye has to be planted every year, the perineal comes back year after year.
The East Coast covers a lot of different growing climates.
If Burmuda does well in your area, I would go with that.
My favorite grasses to grow are st. Augustine, Burmuda, and Bluegrass.
I love bluegrass, but our North Texas climate is not friendly to it. It gets too hot, and we tend to have droughts.
I have St. augustine in most of my yard, there is some Burmuda.
These spread from runners, so if you get a bare spot, after you fix the problem, it fills in fast.
Burned out lawn sounds like too much fertilizer.
I will tell you, had I know before about organic gardening, what I know now, I would always have gardened that way.
I used to spend all my timne, weeding, de-bugging and taking care of problems, trying to stay ahead of them.
Now I just sit back and enjoy my lawn and garden.
I was told to put dry molasses on my lawn, if you can't get it, sugar would work.
Well, the nurseries here didn't carry dry molasses then, so I used sugar.When I was able to get dry molasses, it didn't seem to work as well, to me, so I went back to the sugar.
The reason being, fertilizers kill beneficial microbes that enrich to soil, dry molasses, or sugar, keeps them alive.
If you have good rich soil, weeds won't thrive in it, so after a few years, they don't even come up.If you don't put down poisonous things, lizards, toads, and grass snakes will live in your lawn, and they will eat the bad bugs.Weed killers also kill these beneficial critters, and they kill your earthworms. Those are the best little garden friends you can have. They fertilize the soil for you,and while they are tunneling through it, they are aerating it for you.No thatch buildup to bother with, no tight ,compact soil a root won't go through.
Fertilizer feeds the vegetation, it doesn't make rich soil.Weed killers harm animals and children who walk across it or play on it, and if adults sit on the lawn, down on the grass, they are going to get a little effect from it too. Jujst smelling fertilizers and weed killers etc sets off my Asthma. Since I have gone to organics, I seldom have an asthma attack.My allergies are a lot less troublesom too.
 This is my program.
Every spring and fall I strew sugar on my lawn. We mow, edge, and water it. I spray my roses for black spot and my crepe myrtles for white powdery mildew, with baking soda disolved in water.My lizards keep aphids from my roses better than insecticides ever did.I do the spraying in early spring at first sign of new growth, and again after the rainy season.
That is the extent of my lawn and garden maintenance. I don't have weeds to kill. My soil is so rich they won't come up in it.
When we first started with the sugar. The weeds came up. My next door neighbor's yard was a weed farm, and it seeded mine. We would mow, and after a couple of mowings, we didn't see the weeds. They still came up for a couple of years, and then they just stopped coming up at all.We had crabgrass, johnson grass, dandelions, clover, chickweed, and some I couldn't identify. Haven't seen one of them in about 8 years. they are in the yard next door, but they are never in mine.
Around here we have swarms of Jume Bugs, the larvae of which is the grub worm. they used to drive me nuts, now they aren't a bother. I seldom if ever see a grub when I turn over a shovelfull of dirt to plant something
I have compost bins, which I make myself, very inexpensively, and every spring I have a lot of good rich top soil to top dress my garden with.
I even do the organic thing inside my house. I don't use insect sprays, roach traps etc, and I have NO bugs in my house, not even house  flies. No ants.
If you want to know more about the natural way to keep insects out of your house, write me and I will be glad to share with you what I have lerned.
For the problems you have right now, what I would do is, water thoroughly to wash out that fertilizer so you are sure there is not enough left in the soil to burn new grass. Get some Burmuda, or whatever grass grows there, that spreads by runners. You could put some plugs in those bare areas, about 6 to 8 inches apart, then strew dry molasses or sugar on your yard, and water it in very well. Water to a depth of at least 6 inches, and re-water when they top 2 inches are dry, as a general rule. But while you are trying to get new plugs to grow and spread, mow it to about 2 inches high, and mow when it gets 1 inch growth. this is going to mean mowing a couple times a week, but every time you cut off the top of the blades, the roots will spread a little.
When you water to a depth of 6 inches, the roots grow deeper, and a deep root system helps protect againse heat and cold damage. When you just water so the top couple of inches are wet, to roots have to come to the surface to get water, so you develope a shallow root system, and heat and cold can kill the grass off.
I use 1 pound sugar to each 250 to 300 sq,ft of area.Get those little microbes alive and let them get to work.
I just strew it by hand. I strew in a wide path, but I can remember where I have strewn it. I follow a pattern, so I will know where I left off, on the way back up when I get to the end. It takes me much less time that trying to put fertilizer down by a spreader.When I used to use fertilizer, I could never see where I left off, and in a couple of weeks, I had pale strips where I missed, and burned strips where I overlapped.I tried pupping flour in the spreader, but it didn't help that much If you miss a streak with the sugar, or if you overlap, no big deal.The microbes will spread to the part you missed, and if you dump a whole bag of sugar on one spot, it won't burn it. After I strew my sugar in the spring, all my husband does is mow and edge.Not much time spent on yard work. Gives us more time to plant and care for my roses, and our fruit trees, etc.
My peaches are ripe and ready to harvest, and no worms in them. Only some have bird bites out of them. We finished harvesting our Apriums a couple of weeks ago. That is a cross between an Apricot and a plum, wonderful tasting little fruit. Not a worm in any of them, and no insecticide residue to worry about. My herd of garden critters do a really good job.
I really thing putting sugar (the same kind you sweeten your tea with) or dry molasses down, and plugging in or sodding in those bare areas will fix your yard up in just a short while. you should see a lot of improvement in a couple of months, or less.