How to Aerate, Top Dress, and Overseed Your Lawn

Table of Contents

PREPPING THE GRASS

Get the soil tested for acidity. Adding nutrients to the soil after aerating is highly recommended. After aerating, consider applying a mycorrhizal fungal drench to further improve the appearance of your lawn. Reduce the grass height to the minimum acceptable for your lawn type. You should water your lawn lightly for 30 minutes before aerating it. The aeration of the core will be simplified with this.

DEEP BREATHING

One of the best ways to improve your grass is by doing this. It works by pulling out little chunks of soil all over your lawn, which breaks up compacted soil and thatch. The flow of air, water, beneficial insects, and bacteria is increased as a result.

Time of year to aerate lawn
If you have warm-season grass, you should core aerate it soon after it begins to green up in the spring. If you want to keep your yard from drying out in spring, you should water it every day for the next week. Alternatively, you can do this when temperatures have cooled off a bit in the fall. Grass can get stressed by the heat and lack of rain in the midst of summer, so I wouldn’t advise doing this then.

Aerating your lawn: how to do it
Almost any equipment rental service will have the necessary machinery. There is a kind that can be towed behind a tractor or four-wheeler, which is convenient if your land is expensive. Avoid using an aerator with tines or spiked shoes since they both add to soil compaction. If the thought of doing this much physical labor puts you off, you may want to consider hiring help.

Mowing your grass will give you a good idea of how to use the equipment. Three to five passes should be made in the spring, but just one or two in the fall. When aerating soil that is predominantly clay, it is important to remove as many plugs as possible with a rake. The lawn can stay as is with other kinds of soil. The aeration cores left on the lawn will dissolve in rain or after being watered.

FINAL TOUCHES

In defense of the top-dress
Top dressing is fantastic for filling in divots and other imperfections.
Compaction in heavy traffic regions is lessened as a result.
A “working in” of new soil is another great approach to maintaining a healthy lawn.

Where to put the dirt

Silt from rivers is what most folks in southern Louisiana need, therefore that’s what we recommend. It’s not hard to come by, and it’s probably the same dirt that was used to seed your grass in the first place.

A mixture of peat, loam, and gritty sand might be used if you have a lawn that requires it.

Topdressing with compost is a fantastic idea if you have access to it (or can produce it yourself). With Centipede and St. Augustine grasses, you should use a lower concentration. We have not been able to locate many local vendors willing to fulfill large orders of a reasonably priced, high-quality product.

Sand – Sand can also be an appropriate alternative. It’s often frowned upon unless your day job involves being on a golf course.

Since Centipede and St. Augustine do not thrive in environments with high concentrations of organic matter, we do not advise using bed builder or very much of anything like that. Also, this has poor drainage and will make your yard soggy and muddy.

Do not apply manure. Rely on us!

What to Wear on Top:
Dressing the top is easy. Get soil, toss soil, do it again, and rake when done. Here are a few suggestions for how to proceed.

Wheelbarrow, shovel, and rake — the hard way to get the job done. You can fan it out with a shovel after transporting it to the desired spreading region. Top dressing is needed, and you should plan on using about three pounds per square yard. Keep the depth of the new dirt at about a quarter to a third of an inch. You could perhaps kill part of your existing grass if you apply more than this. After you’re done, use a rake to get rid of the dirt that’s sitting on top of the grass. Time and Tylenol are going to be necessities for this, as you may have noticed. It would take a single person at least two days to complete the typical backyard.

Optimal Procedure
Rent a top-of-the-line dressing machine if at all possible. There will still be some raking and loading of the machine to do, but it will make short work of this otherwise laborious task. The problem is that you won’t find very many of these because few individuals bother to alter their lawns in this way.

Simple Solution
Get help from a lawn care service that offers top dressing services. The extra cost is justified by the time and energy you won’t have to spend recuperating over the weekend.

OVERSEEDING

For what reason was this oversight
You shouldn’t have to overseed a healthy, full yard. Continue the positive cultural traditions that have been in place for some time. Overseeding might assist if your lawn is getting thin or if weeds are threatening to take over.

Time for Oversight
Overseeding is most effective when done within the appropriate growing season of the seed being planted. Between the warm days of spring and the sweltering heat of early summer is our preferred climate. The grass will have less time to grow before winter if you overseed in the midst of summer, and it will require more water because of the extreme heat. It’s debatable whether you should be overseeded before or after applying a top treatment. Since there is a chance of burying it too deep if you overseed it before top dressing, I usually prefer to do it after.

Seeding too heavily in the spring and summer
Excellent for Overseeding in Bermuda
You should only use Zoysia to oversee your Centipede grass if your yard has bare spots.
St. Augustine says, “Overseeing is not necessary.” Fill up barren places with sod.

Late-season and winter overseeding
Use a low-growing rye grass to overseed your lawn in the late fall if you have a mixture of grasses. It will keep your grass green over the winter months but will perish once the weather warms up again in the spring.

When to Overlook
A push spreader can be used to do the overseeding. To use, load the spreader, adjust the settings on the bag, and maintain a steady pace. Carefully consider where you want the grass to grow (your flower beds) before you sow the seeds.

READY TO SERVE, JUST ADD WATER

Get at least five inches of water down into the earth by watering your lawn right away. To ensure the seeds germinate, you’ll need to water your grass every day for the following month and a half.

Aeration and top dressing are on sale for a 10% discount till the end of March. You can reach us at 225.752.2333 or check out our website at http://www.GreenSeasons.us if you live in Southeast Louisiana, which includes the cities of Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

linda