To Seed, or Not to Overseed, That is the Question

It’s hard to believe, but cold weather and dormant bermuda lawns are right around the corner. The lawn will lose its color and turn a light tan color as the frost kicks in. Is that good or bad?

The real question is whether or not to overseed the lawn to mask this brown look. Obviously if you hate the look of a dormant lawn you would lean towards overseeding to have a green lawn year-round, but here are a few reasons not to overseed. It’s nice to have a few months off from mowing. Secondly, bermuda will not have to compete next spring and early summer with an aggressive ryegrass lawn for space. Bermuda will green up faster and fill in quicker without ryegrass. The use of pre-emergents will help reduce invasion of winter annual weeds to help keep a uniformly clean, brown lawn and need to go down September-October.

Overseeding your lawn in early October can give you a beautiful, green lawn this winter. It is especially a smart option when facing a mixed stand lawn or patch stand of grasses. This will help hide and even the uniformity of the lawn. As the trees grow larger and produce more shade, the bermuda lawns start thinning out and the ryegrass can provide some much needed cover in those areas. On the negative side, overseeding results in mowing the lawn for 3-4 months a year that could have been avoided had you not seeded. Once you start the overseeding process it is difficult to stop in future years as portions of the ryegrass will remain from the previous season through seed or just persistence. The non-overseeded year will often be a mostly brown lawn with numerous clumps of rye. Also, as stated above, the bermuda stand itself may be thinned somewhat due to the persistent and aggressive nature of ryegrass.

If the scales tip in favor of overseeding your lawn, you must then choose the right seed. Without going into all the various improved varieties and their features I will sum it all up by saying DO NOT OVERSEED WITH ANNUAL RYEGRASS. It is a low quality grass used in erosion control and pastures. It grows quickly, its coarse textured, yellow-green in color, and prone to winter diseases. Perennial ryegrass vastly excels annual rye in all categories. Be sure to buy a clean, high quality seed without weedy grass contaminants. Please check the seed bag tags. 

As for me, I overseed my common bermuda front lawn for the neighbors, but I also love that clean, dormant hybrid bermuda in the back that gives me a break for 4 months.

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30 Days to a Better Lawn in 2014

Step outside and take a good look at your lawn. Do you see bare spots or patches of undesirable looking grasses and weeds? Maybe your kids’ activities, your dog’s constant pacing in the same path day after day, or your parking the car on the front lawn has caused the lawn to thin out due to wear and compaction. It’s true that the 19 straight days of temperatures exceeding 100 degrees certainly did not help our cool-season lawns either. The lawns are beat and just looking for some tender care.

Cooler temperatures are just around the corner. What is left of the lawn will perk up and appreciate the cool nights and shorter, milder days. Crabgrass will stop germinating by mid to late September. Thirty days from now life will be great!

What needs to be done in the next 30 days to have a better lawn for next year? Get ready because this is where you come into the mix. Check for unwanted grasses. Patches of Bermuda or dallisgrass are hard to kill and should be sprayed 2-3 times in the starting early September. Dense sections of crabgrass or bentgrass are fairly easy to kill and could wait until the middle of September to spray. If you think the lawn looks bad now just wait to see what it looks like in a few weeks!

Here’s the good news. Oct 1-10 is a great time to reseed all those problem areas. I would strongly recommend scalping down the areas to be reseeded prior to seeding followed by a fall lawn aeration to loosen the soil and encourage better root development. Areas could then be raked or dethatched mechanically to make a proper seed bed. Select a quality grass to match your existing lawn and follow suggested seeding directions. Generally tall fescue and ryegrass go down around 7-10 lbs/1000 sq ft. Next apply a ¼ inch of clean humus or compost to cover the seed to keep in the warmth and moisture to insure good germination. Apply a starter fertilizer like 10-20-10 at 10 lbs/1000. Water 2-3 times a day lightly to keep the mulch and seed moist for the first 7-14 days.

Here is what you don’t want to do. 1). Nothing. Your lawn will be no better next year and likely worse. 2). Sprinkle some seed over the bare spots and hope for the best. This is not much better than option 1. 3). Buy the cheapest seed you can find like annual ryegrass. This will result in the ugliest lawn on your block. Annual rye never really greens up, it grows very fast and often clumpy, and it does not match any grasses in your lawn. and it often gets riddled with disease in the winter months.

The window of opportunity is here. Now get outside and take the actions needed for a better lawn in 2014!

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