When to overseed?

Hi all, my lawn has not survived winter too well and it seems a lot of the hard work I did last year has been undone by the rain, snow and frost.

I want to get a good start for this year, so when should I consider overseeding my lawn? Is it too early now?

TIA

 

For the novices (me) what's overseeding?
So many seed types, which would be best to cope with sandy soil and toddlers?

Cheers
D

 

Well, from one novice to another, overseeding is simply putting more seed over an already established lawn.

I've done it from a simple chucking seed down after I've cut the grass, to practically scalping the lawn and top treating it with a sand/compost mixture and seed mix.

The latter really did re-establish a poor area of lawn and the former has helped to thicken other areas.

Hope that helps.

 

I wonder if you need to improve the drainage and get some more air into it?

Maybe that was the hard work you did last year though ... but if not it might account for why you have patches that are not doing very well?

 

Cheers guys.
I'll give that a go. Is there a preferred type of compost for this function?
When I put some on before it looked rather clumpy and I was worried it might smother the grass I was trying to help. I've just tried general purpose compost non peat which had woody lumps in it withheld added John innes whatever that means. So I gave up on it.

Thanks
D

 

Hi Kristen

At the end of last year I had a local coloured thumb franchise come out to inspect the lawn as I had been trying to get it aerated throughout the year.

His advice was that it didn't need aerating as it wasn't compacted.

I'd used spiked shoes last year and did the best I could, but I would still like to get the existing lawn aerated and a good level of top soil down, if only to level off the lay of the land a bit.

I had an awful, scraggy, mixed hedge taken out last year and the patches that didn't make it through winter are the areas that got a good trampling through this work, although I had managed to restore them somewhat through last year.[hr]

Hi, I can't remember what I used, but it had some woody lumps in too. I remember that it absolutely stank though.

If you are going to try it again, I had success with cutting the grass short, aerating the lawn with spiked shoes, tipping the mixture over the lawn and then sweeping it out with a stiff brush and then overseeding.

I thought I had killed the lawn to be honest, but it came back lovely. It's about the only area that looks good at this moment in time to be honest, so it must have been worth doing.