Overseeding
This is a service where what happens after we leave matters more than what happens while we are there. Start with the two things that can wreck it before we ever pull a plug.
And Wires
The aerator pulls plugs three to four inches deep and it cannot see what it is about to pull up. Before your visit, mark:
- Irrigation and sprinkler heads
- Invisible dog fence wire
- Shallow cable, internet, and low voltage lighting wire
- Septic lids, drain covers, and cleanouts
- Shallow well lines, dog stakes, and anything else set just under the surface
- If we have your account flagged for underground wires, like an invisible dog fence, we are not going to gamble with tines in the ground. We will be switching your visit to a liquid wetting agent instead of core aeration.
- What a wetting agent does. It is a soil treatment that helps water soak in and stay put instead of beading up or running off. It holds moisture in the root zone where seed and roots can use it, and it reduces the hard crusting that happens when soil dries out.
- Straight with you: it is not the same as pulling plugs, and we will not pretend it is. It is the right call when the alternative is cutting your fence line.
- Not sure if your account is flagged? Call the office at (518) 914-4120 and we will check before your visit.
Two things, in one visit, in this order. Neither one works nearly as well without the other.
A machine pulls thousands of small soil plugs out of your lawn and drops them on the surface. That opens up compacted ground so air, water, and roots can actually move.
Compaction is quiet damage. You do not see it, you just see a lawn that thins out every year no matter what goes on it. Cornell puts core aeration at its most effective in late summer through early fall, when temperatures are cooling and the soil is only slightly moist.
Fresh seed goes down with the aerator so the tines can knock the seed down to the soil base.
Seed sitting on top of hard ground does almost nothing. Seed touching loose soil is what grows. Those holes are the whole point, and they are why the two services go together instead of separately.
Late August through September and into early October is the best seeding window we get in upstate New York. Soil is still warm enough to sprout seed, the air is cooling off, weed pressure is dropping, and rain is more reliable. Miss it, and you are waiting a full year for conditions this good again.
We do not use one grass type for every lawn. Seed gets matched to whether your lawn has irrigation, because that changes what will actually survive or thrive here.
A 50/50 blend of perennial ryegrass and Kentucky bluegrass.
The ryegrass sprouts fast and holds the soil while the bluegrass gets going. The bluegrass is the long game. It spreads on its own underground and slowly knits everything together into real turf.
It just needs consistent water to do it, which is why this blend goes on irrigated lawns.
Turf type tall fescue. Deeper roots, tougher through a dry stretch, and far more forgiving when nobody is out there dragging a hose in August.
It does not spread and fill in the way bluegrass does, so it gets seeded a little heavier and thickens by adding plants rather than creeping.
Heavy shade, wet ground, a lawn that is already mostly one type of grass, or a property that gets watered by hand and watered well.
When your lawn is one of those, it is already noted on your account and we seed to the note, not the rule.
Rate is 5 pounds per 1,000 square feet of professional grade seed. That is deliberate. Piling on more seed does not get you more lawn, it gets you thousands of seedlings choking each other out for the same water and light. Cornell says the same thing in plainer terms: too much seed creates too much competition.
- Because seed is going down, we will be upgrading your Round 5 fertilizer to a 15-15-5 organic based starter fertilizer from Hudson Valley Organics.
- What those numbers mean. Nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, in that order. The middle number is the story here. Phosphorus drives root growth, and brand new seedlings live or die on how fast they root in. A starter fertilizer is built around that middle number so your new grass gets anchored before the ground goes cold.
- Why we do not use this all year. New York restricts phosphorus on lawns because it runs off into lakes and ponds and feeds algae. The law makes an exception for establishing new grass, which means seeding time is the one window where phosphorus belongs on your lawn. So that is exactly when we use it.
We work through routes in order, so the exact day can move. Rain, saturated ground, equipment, and how the days ahead of yours run can all shift things. We do not need you home, and you do not need to do anything the day of. These are the things worth handling in the days before.
- Mark your sprinklers and wires. The big one, covered up top. Flags or spray paint, before your visit.
- Mow a little shorter than usual. Around 2 to 2.5 inches, the day before if you can. Short grass means seed reaches soil instead of hanging up in the canopy. Bag those clippings if your mower bags.
- Water the day before if it has been dry. Aerator tines need slightly moist soil to pull a real plug. Rock hard ground gives us shallow scratches. Soaked ground gives us a mess. Damp is the target, so if we have had good rain, do nothing.
- Clear the lawn and unlock the gates. Hoses, toys, furniture, planters, pet waste. Please have pets inside for the visit. The machines are loud and the crew moves fast.
- Flag any soft or wet spots. If part of your yard stays soggy, let us know so we can work around it instead of rutting it up.
Everything you have been told about watering an established lawn is backwards for new seed. Established grass wants deep and infrequent. New seed wants light and often. The seed sits in the top half inch of soil, and that half inch has to stay damp until it sprouts. Not soaked. Damp.
Start the day we finish, or the next morning at the latest. Run roughly 10 to 15 minutes per zone or per sprinkler spot, morning, midday, and late afternoon. You are misting the surface, not soaking the ground. If water is running down the driveway or pooling, that is too much and it floats seed off site. Last cycle should finish by early evening so blades are not sitting wet overnight.
Once you can see a green haze coming in, back off to about once a day and run a little longer. Cornell’s guidance is to gradually reduce water after seedlings emerge, because that is what pushes roots down instead of keeping them sitting at the surface.
Two or three deep waterings a week, roughly an inch total including rain. Now you are watering a lawn again instead of babysitting seed.
A good soaking rain buys you a day. Do not run the system on top of it.
Overwatering does real damage here, it washes seed into low spots and leaves you with bare high ground and thick stripes where it collected.
A hose and an oscillating sprinkler moved around does the job.
Most people cannot hit two or three cycles a day on a work schedule, so aim for morning and evening and hit your thinnest, sunniest areas first. A cheap hose timer is about twenty bucks and it will do more for your lawn than any product we sell.
On the blended lawns, the ryegrass is up long before the bluegrass.
People see green, shut off the water, and lose the entire bluegrass half of the seeding. Keep watering until the slow stuff is up too.
Germination is not one date, it is a range. Cool weather stretches all of it, and a patchy, uneven look for the first few weeks is completely normal.
The fast one. First green you see on a blended lawn is almost always the ryegrass.
Steady and reliable. Comes in a little behind ryegrass and keeps filling for weeks.
The slow one, and the reason you keep watering when the lawn already looks green.
Soil plugs everywhere, seed visible on the surface, the whole lawn looking chewed up.
That is a job done right, not a job done wrong.
They break down on their own in a couple weeks and feed soil back into the lawn.
If they bug you, wait until they dry and drag a rake across them. Do not haul them off, you are throwing away your own topsoil.
What you get this fall is establishment. Bluegrass in particular spends its first season building roots, then fills in and thickens the following year.
The real payoff shows up next spring. Judge this seeding in May, not in October.
Watering is the biggest one, but these will cost you seed too.
- Keep traffic off. Kids, pets, parked trailers, wheelbarrows. Seedlings are fragile and a footpath through new grass turns into a bare path that lasts. Give it about a month before regular foot traffic.
- Mow when it is ready, not on schedule. Wait until the new grass is about a third taller than your normal height, so roughly 4 inches if you cut at 3. Never take off more than a third in one pass. Let the ground dry enough that tires do not rut it.
- Sharpen the blade first. A dull blade tears young seedlings straight out of the ground instead of cutting them. Cornell calls this one out specifically, and we see it every fall.
- No weed control on the new grass. Nothing goes down until the seeded areas have been mowed three or four times, which is usually four to six weeks out. That includes anything from the hardware store. If weeds pop up in the meantime, hand pulling them is your only option.
- Stay ahead of the leaves. A blanket of wet leaves smothers seedlings fast. Blow them off gently or mow them up light. Skip the heavy raking, it pulls new grass right out with the leaves.
- Keep mowing into late fall. Do not let new grass go into winter tall and floppy. Keep cutting until it stops growing, which around here is usually well into October or early November.
We bring the equipment, the timing, and good seed. That is our part, and we take it seriously. But the water is yours, and on a seeding job the water does most of the work.
We have watched perfect aeration jobs fail on a dry two weeks, and we have watched average ones turn into the best lawn on the street because somebody stayed on the sprinkler.