lawn transition help

- took down 18 trees in my front and side yard last fall and now have a yard in need of work.
- Over the past couple of years I have been using organic ferts and corn glu for weed control

With all the traffic on the lawn there are a lot of bare spots. My solution has been to put down ringer lawn fert and dimensions to kill the weeds. My thinking is once the lawn thickens back up I can stop the dimensions.

Any thoughts?
Connecticut, 16,000sf of lawn, mostly flat, transitioned for mostly shade to partial shade this year, mow at 3 “, mulch, do not water due to well limitations.

hmm, funny, I'm doing just the opposite, I'm trying to have LESS lawn and MORE trees.

I have dug out gobs and gobs of sod and even took a field and turned it into a pond, I'm planting trees and shrubs everywhere I can..(although I am losing some from emerald ash borers this year..wah)

I hope you don't go down the same path..plant them just to cut them down years later. The previous owners planted the tress or let them grow to close to the house. We discoved that some of them were rotting from the inside out. Had to cut them down for safety sake.

I cant see how grass monoculture is relivent on this forum. DEATH TO ALL LAWNS!

David, after hanging around on this site for a while you will start to see the value of lessening the size of your lawn in favor of tress, shrubs and bushes that provide something more than what lawn grass has to offer.  I started out by coming here trying to get my lawn looking great.  After all the good advice last year it did make a complete turnaround this spring and it does look amazing.  In fact, it is pretty much self feeding now that the soil is so much better than last year.  I do not plan to do anything to it this year.

Now, I am convinced that making the smaller and having it become a food source for ourselves and the local fauna makes more sense.  We did it with a severe slope we had in the backyard by adding fruit trees and bushes.  We cut the back lawn size down by adding a garden too.  Our plans for the front lawn include adding tall grasses, berry bushes and the like to create an area that is still attractive so it won't drive the neighbors over the edge, but performs more than the function of looking like a green carpet.

Also, we had added clover to the lawn, and don't bother to pick off the dandelions and other weeds, as long as they aren't becoming invasive.  The clover adds nitrogen so fertilizing is lessened, or eliminated.  Mowing high and mulching the clippings adds back most of the nutrients the lawn needs.  Much of the lawn is tall fescue that we reseeded last year with and it does not require the high nitrogen feeding of bluegrass.

Try to keep an open mind and cruise around the site for ways to make that lawn into more than just an open space that does little for wildlife and overall sustainability.  The less you have to mow, the better.  The more you can grow on that space to provide things for yourself and wildlife to eat is a more practical and rewarding endeavor, in my opinion.

Good luck, and have fun while doing it.

Sounds like I may be in the wrong forum.
I have 1 & 3/4 acre lot so 16,000sf really isn't much lawn for the lot size. Over the past several years I knock off (return to nature) about 500 sf of lawn per year. I'm finding the extra gardens are more work than the lawn.
Also, my thinking is that if I can truly convert my lawn to organic, feed the soil and not the grass I'll have a fairly self sustaining lawn. It should need less water, less ferts and should not need any weed killer.

So I think were all heading in the same direction I just need a little help getting there (nice thick organic lawn)

Have you read Paul's article on lawn care?
http://www.richsoil.com/lawn-care.jsp

After reading that, follow this https://permies.com/permaculture-forums/11_0/lawn-care/organic-lawn-care-for-the-cheap-and-lazy thread.  Most lawn care questions can be answered between those two links.