Spring Seeding Tips

A couple of weeks ago I performed a spring seeding of my lawn and would like to share some spring seeding tips. My goal was to fill bare spots and overseed my dog’s run. Overseeding the run is most likely a waste of time but I had to give it a try.

I live in USDA Hardiness Zone 6 where we grow cool-season grass. In a nutshell, cool-season grass goes dormant in the winter when temperatures are cold and over the summer when temperatures are hot.

My goal is to complete spring overseeding as early as possible. Definitely before forsythia bloom. If there are a few warm days at the end of winter and the ground isn’t muddy I take advantage of the opportunity to overseed thin spots.

The ideal time to plant cool-season grass is late August to September when temperatures are cool and rainfall abundant. I don’t plant new lawns in the spring unless absolutely necessary. However, spring overseeding and filling bare spots is acceptable.

The first thing I did was run my Aerovator over the bare areas. If you don’t have an Aerovator you can rent an aerator or use a metal rake to roughen the soil. Grass seed wants to grow and if kept moist it will.

The Aerovator has solid tines, unlike an aerator’s hollow tines, which penetrate the soil and vibrate.

Again, you don’t need an Aerovator to do the job but once you see the results you’ll be amazed. The machine leaves the lawn spongy soft with holes that allow air, water, nutrients and seed to enter.

While the Aerovator is an aggressive machine, you can control the amount it disturbs the soil. However, if there is no grass cover, like my dog’s run, the results are very similar to using a tiller.

Once I aerovated the lawn I generously spread Lesco Shady Select Grass Seed. I have a lot of sugar maples that provide plenty of shade.

Most cool-season grass seed mixes contain bluegrass, fescue and ryegrass. If you have shade you want a seed mix with more fescue. The amount of fescue in this seed mix is off the charts! I can’t wait to see how it does.

When seeding I always go heavy. Clients like to see grass as soon as possible and I like to grow grass as thick as possible.

I used the back of a bamboo rake to incorporate the seed into the soil. While I know every tutorial ever written on planting grass says to do this I admit I often skip this step and the seed does wonderfully. Again, the secret to growing grass is to keep the seed moist.

Finally, I top-dressed the area with a light coating of compost. I would say the compost is 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick.

I selected well-aged compost with little debris. I picked some debris out while shoveling the compost into the wheelbarrow.

Once finished composting I walked away and didn’t water once. It’s been a relatively warm, yet dry, spring and I’m happy to say after two and a half weeks there’s a green fuzz in the backyard. We did get a couple of rainstorms.

I would have better results if I watered the new seed, and you will too, but it’s early enough that mother nature will do most of the work. Seeing the seedlings motivated me to start watering though it’s supposed to rain the next couple of days.

As you can see above seeding my dog’s run was an exercise in futility. However, if you use these spring seeding tips in your yard you’ll have great results.