With time, lawns tend to develop heavy thatch layers and bare spots, but reseeding your yard can help thick, lush grass to appear when warm weather hits. If you would like to plant cool-season grass, like ryegrass, to get a green lawn all year or warm-season grasses, like zoysia or Bermuda grass, the ideal time to reseed the yard is in the fall.
About Reseeding
Reseeding will help fill in a lean lawn, cover bare spots or maintain your lawn green from the winter by overseeding cool-season grasses over warm-season ones. It also lets you add a new assortment of grass to your lawn, like fescue in areas that have become shady as trees grew taller. Grass often needs reseeding since the thatch layer, which sits on top of the soil and is composed of sloping grass clippings, stems and roots, is overly fragile and is starting to starve out sections of your yard.
Months
The very best time to reseed your lawn is just as the weather starts to cool but well before the threat of frost. With warm- or cool-season grasses, plant them at the start of September to get the best results. If you have plans for Labor Day weekend, then you can reseed at the end of August rather. Finish any reseeding from the middle of September to provide any cool-season grasses time to become established before cold weather arrives.
Benefits
Reseeding in the fall provides several advantages over seeding in the spring. The cooler temperatures mean that there are fewer weeds in your lawn, giving cool-season grasses less competition as they become established. The trees have dropped their leaves, which means the seeds get lots of sunlight. Warm-season seeds have a chance to rest from the soil and are ready to germinate when the weather heats up, taking out the guesswork about the perfect planting fever.
Method
For the reseeding efforts to be successful, you have to first prepare the yard. Rake over the current grass with a steel rake to remove the thatch layer and to loosen the soil. This is also a fantastic time to aerate, running a mechanical plug aerator over the lawn to open holes in the soil and provide existing grass room to spread its roots. Expand the seed using a seed spreader, then rake over the lawn again to cover the seeds with a shallow layer of soil. Water the seeds daily for at least 10 days for cool-season grasses. To get warm-season seeds, water nicely the very first day to allow them to get securely set from the soil, then water your current bud typically until spring arrives. When you place seedlings peeking through the soil, water daily for a little while.