My experiences are one part appearances and the other part moving to a new area. Where my wife and I grew up neither of our families did any regular fertilizer

My experiences are one part appearances and the other part moving to a new area. Where my wife and I grew up neither of our families did any regular fertilizer or anything just occasional weeding and lawns would be thick and green. Now we live in another part of the country and the soil is terrible. So it’s hard to have a lawn take hold, without constant irrigation. We live on a well so I’m not interested also that’s a pretty big waste of water. I don’t mind the clover we have but the crabgrass is out of control.