If you live where the summer heat has broken, you can seed any time. The best ways to prevent crabgrass are to 1. Never seed grass in the spring. If you have to seed grass in the spring, then expect to have crabgrass for one season only. 2. Come springtime, never treat your lawn like you were seeding it. This means leave your grass as long as you can stand it and only water once a week. Crabgrass seed needs daily watering to sprout; so does grass seed. Crabgrass seedling needs sunlight to grow once the seed sprouts; so do grass seedlings. If you plant grass in the fall, the crabgrass, being an annual, will not sprout. Planting grass in the fall gives it six months to mature the roots so your grass can survive the heat next summer. If you have tall grass, reasonably dense from lots of seed in the fall, then you should not have any problems with crabgrass next year. Just don't start daily watering next spring. Of course you have to deal with rain as it comes.

Yes, White vinegar works well, however if your looking to do an acre I would rec. using something else... plenty of diff types of vegetation killers out there. I use vinegar for around flower beds, and under treats as pot treatments.

If you spray vinegar as a foliar spray on the leaves of plants in full sun, most of them will die. Some more hardy plants, English ivy for example, will not be affected. Some weaker weeds will turn black, turn crispy, and collapse to dust, all in 30 minutes when sprayed with vinegar. When you spray in the shade or on a cloudy day, those same plants do not seem to be affected by the vinegar. If you spray it indiscriminately on weeds in your lawn, the overspray will kill the adjacent grass. I have made a shield for the grass out of shirt cardboard. I drew a line down the middle of the cardboard and a circle in the middle. Then cut the cardboard along the line and cut out the circle. When you put the two pieces of cardboard together with the weed in the hole, you can spray the weed without spraying the grass. You can sometimes find horticultural vinegar at garden or feed stores. It comes in at 20% acidity whereas household vinegar is 5%. The 20% stuff must be handled with care. Breathing it is not so much a problem because with one whiff you want to leave it alone. The worst problem is getting it in your eyes. It will blind you for weeks or months until your eyes heal. Wear protection and be careful not to splash it near your face or even on your hands (you might wipe it into your eyes). Apple cider vinegar is vinegar. Spray it at full strength in full sun. On the other hand, vinegar is a carbohydrate and as such is food for bacteria. When vinegar gets into the soil, nothing seems to happen. It would be interesting to see some research on what happens to the soil microbes when vinegar hits the soil.

I would say its 90% defoliated, so hopefully it will come back. The smallest and youngest leaves are ok which leads me to believe their roots are deep inside and so were unaffected. Its been near death from over/underwatering, aphids, spider mites so I hope it soldiers on. By bare-rooting, you mean to trim away dead stuff, trim back the roots a bit to stimulate it? I will repot in new soil, prune it and let you know in a few weeks how it does. Thanks everyone, wow what a great forum!