A thorough lawn care plan must be actively managed if you want to achieve and maintain a stunning, full, and lush green lawn. Overseeding is a crucial step in ensuring the development of a lush, thick, and opulent lawn with healthy grass.
To achieve your ideal lawn with the utmost natural beauty and resilience, you must go through this lawn enhancement process. In order to create and maintain lush, beautiful lawns with vibrant, healthy growth, the team of lawn care experts at Lawn Love is dedicated to fusing art and science.
Overseeding is a great process to grow and maintain an ideal lawn with pure, unmatched beauty as part of your ongoing lawn-boosting strategy. Only the expert care of gardeners and lawn care professionals, or the thoughtful, pro-active attention that homeowners can offer, will result in well-cultivated lawns that grow and flourish.
Table of Contents
Step To Overseed A Lawn In Spring
1. Rake The Lawn And Mow It.
Getting grass seed in contact with the soil is the aim of overseeding a lawn. The first step in achieving that is to mow the lawn. Mow it less frequently than usual to give the grass seed a better chance of getting to the soil. To prevent them from getting between the seeds and soil, be sure to bag the clippings.
Rake the entire lawn after cutting it to get rid of any debris, dead grass, and rocks. In order to prepare the soil for seeding and germination, this process eliminates any remaining barriers between the grass seed and the soil.
2. Amend The Soil
In contrast to fertilizers, soil amendments have specialized nutrients and chemical makeups for particular soil types. To make acidic soil more suitable for particular plants and grasses, for instance, lime, wood ash, and poultry manure raise the pH level of the soil. On the other hand, sulfur amendments make alkaline soil more acidic. Peat moss for clay soil and compost for sandy soil additions can both help the lawn’s condition and nutrients.
A soil test can be used to identify the soil type and pH if a lawn hasn’t been growing and turning green as it should. The test results will reveal whether the soil needs any particular types of amendments in order for grass to grow. Remember that fertile soil with a neutral pH probably doesn’t require any amendments.
3. Toss The Grass Seed.
Start by placing the grass seed into a seed spreader and spreading approximately 16 seeds per square inch of soil at the right time to overseed. Some lawns may only require a lower seed density because it will depend on how thick the current lawn is. If you don’t have a spreader, you can also spread grass seeds by hand.
Select a grass seed that matches the existing grass and is adapted to your climate or region. In climates with a wide range of temperatures, such as those found in the Northeast and Pacific Northwest, lawns with cool-season grasses flourish. Climates like those in the southern United States are ideal for warm-season grass growth.
In order to select the best grass type, it can be helpful to consult the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map to determine the typical local climate. Choose grass seed that has received a rating from the National Turfgrass Evaluation Program because these cultivars have been examined and found to be disease, drought, and common pest resistant.
4. Add Fertilizer For Grass Seed.
In a fertilizer spreader, fill it with the finest fertilizer. To ensure fertilizer reaches the edges, first, scatter it around the lawn’s perimeter. After that, move in straight rows in a manner akin to that of mowing the lawn until the entire lawn has been fertilized.
There are various fertilizer spreaders, such as a broadcast spreader, handheld spreader, snap spreader, drop spreader, and liquid sprayer. While larger yards will require less time and effort with a broadcast spreader, smaller yards frequently only need to be fertilized with a small handheld spreader.
What kind of spreader is best for your property will depend on the size of your yard and the type of fertilizer you use. For instance, midsize yards can be fertilized more easily with a snap or drop spreader than with a sprayer, like one of these high-quality backpack sprayers. It’s important to keep in mind that some spreaders can handle both broadcasting grass seed and fertilizer, so if that’s the case, you might only need one spreader or tool overall.
5. The Lawn That Has Been Seeded Needs Water.
Water the lawn for just a few minutes each day after fertilizing. To get the most water intake, water early in the morning. The afternoon and evening have higher rates of evaporation, so more water is needed to achieve the same results. Overwatering the lawn can wash away the seed, prevent germination, or encourage the development of thatch, as well as the growth of fungus and weeds. Reduce the amount of time you water if there are puddles or if the ground feels soft.
Using the above-mentioned procedures and tools will make it much easier for you to complete the task of overseeding lawn grass. Starting with your growing region and grass type (warm or cool season), choose the best time for success. Mow and rake the area once more to prepare it for lawn seeding. Use a thatch rake or aerate the lawn before seeding if the lawn has a thick layer of thatch. The next step is to amend the soil as necessary to ensure that your grass seed will take root and develop to produce a strong, lush lawn.
Choose a seed based on the type of grass already present, the climate, and other factors, and then scatter it by hand or with a spreader. Use a spreader to evenly distribute some fertilizer after that. Then, water the lawn frequently, but not until it is sodden that water runs or pools on the ground.
Is Overseeding My Lawn Necessary?
With overseeding, bare spots will be filled in, the lawn’s thickness will be increased, and its color will be improved. An older lawn’s resistance to pests, disease, drought, and heavy traffic can be increased by overseeding it with more modern varieties of turfgrass.
What Time Should I Overseed My Lawn?
If you want to oversee your lawn, fall and spring are the best seasons to do it. Fall is the ideal season. Since the soil is still warm, the seed will germinate more quickly. Additionally, weeds won’t have to compete with your new grass for sunlight, water, and nutrients after the summer because weed growth slows down.
The alternate is to overseed in the spring. Although the temperature should still be warm enough for the seeds to sprout, it’s important to plant them and give them time to grow before the summer’s higher temperatures and potential drought.
Which Seed Shall I Plant?
In order to get the best results, we advise spending a little more on high-quality seeds. Black Beauty® The original Jonathan Green grass seed blend is known as Original Grass Seed, and it is used by sod farmers all over the USA. Because of a waxy leaf coating that retains moisture and protects against stress from heat, cold, wind, and disease, it develops roots that can reach a depth of four feet and produces a naturally darker-green turf with better disease resistance and drought tolerance. Our blend thrives in either full sun or partial shade, on sandy or clay soil.
Exactly How Do I Get The Soil Ready?
The soil needs to be at the proper pH, aerated, and loosen before you plant any seeds in order to encourage healthy root development. To help get the soil ready for new grass seed, Jonathan Green makes two excellent products that can be used right before overseeding.
Different Methods For Overseeding Lawns Today
1. Slit-Seeding With a Mechanical Slit-Seeder
For established turf, this is the recommended method for overseeding. The best slit-seeders feature vertical cutting blades that slit through the thatch layer to create a slit or mini-groove (or small trench) in the soil. The depth of this tiny trench or slit should not be greater than half the length of the grass seed husk and will vary depending on the kind of grass seed you use.
To keep the slits open as the seed is inserted deeply enough to germinate, the slit-seeder should be fitted with concave disk blades that mimic the shape of the slits. Without any seed being lost through scattering, this overseeding technique ensures the proper seed distribution into the soil. This fact guarantees high germination rates, resulting in fuller, more beautiful new grass growth.
Slit-seeders, such as the Ryan®Mataway®Overseeder, is highly recommended by many lawn care professionals for getting excellent overseeding results. Many experts on lawn growth advise twice overseeding each patch of turf. Each pass should seed at a rate that is half of the overall rate advised for your lawn.
Each set of seeds will be planted in the soil about two inches apart if you make both passes at a 45-degree angle to one another, forming a pattern resembling a diamond. Even though some overseers lay down their seed in three-inch rows, your lawn will end up with a grass cover that looks striped. Before you begin overseeding, make sure to gauge the amount of thatch on your lawn. Before overseeding, you should dethatch the turf if the thatch is thicker than half an inch.
2. Broadcast Seeding Using a Cyclone or Drop-Style Seeder
Broadcast seeding is a good alternative if you are unable to use a slit-seeder. Before spreading the seed, aerate the area several times, with the aeration holes being no more than two to three inches apart. Remove soil plugs with core-style aerating tines for the best seed-to-soil contact. After overseeding is finished, thoroughly water the entire area. This will disintegrate the surface aeration cores by washing the new seed into the aeration holes.
The large amounts of seed that can get caught in the thatch layer and never penetrate the soil to germinate are one issue that frequently arises when broadcast seeding. To ensure even grass growth when using this method of overseeding, it is best to use bluegrass or other creeping grasses. In the aeration holes, new grass will grow if you plant grass varieties that won’t spread, giving your lawn a clumped or tufted appearance. Always remember that more grass seed must be used when broadcasting seeding because the rate of germination is lower than when using the slit-seeding technique.
When overseeding your lawn or property grounds, avoid using excessive amounts of seed. The same as with trees, bushes, and all other kinds of plants, thick, lush green lawns take time to grow. Overcrowding of newly sprouted grass seed may result from applying too much seed to your existing lawn. Stronger grass sprouts will survive, but they may suffocate existing grass, necessitating further overseeding.