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ok i have a question is there a grass that i can apply that will just take over an existing lawn and still look good next year? i water 2 times a week in the evening for 30 minutes per zone. thanks

Are you talking about overseeding a lawn and expecting the new grass to crowd out the current grass?

If only it were that easy!

Typically, you have to spray everything with Roundup and wait for it to die. Then rake off all that dead vegetation and till the ground, sow the seed, fertilize, and water. You want to have mowed the new grass going into winter.

It may be too late to do this now. Should start in mid-August with the Roundup, with seed in the ground early to mid September, at least where I live.

cpurvis said:

Are you talking about overseeding a lawn and expecting the new grass to crowd out the current grass?

If only it were that easy!

Typically, you have to spray everything with Roundup and wait for it to die. Then rake off all that dead vegetation and till the ground, sow the seed, fertilize, and water. You want to have mowed the new grass going into winter.

It may be too late to do this now. Should start in mid-August with the Roundup, with seed in the ground early to mid September, at least where I live.

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thanks that is what i was talking about but your reply sounds like that is not the way to go. so i may wind up doing the roundup way but as you suggest next year most likely will be a better time to start it. thanks for the input. bp.

Where do you live? What kind of grass is suitable in your area. Growing a lawn is 90 per cent preparation. Were it me, I'd recommend sod. I don't know what kind of grass you're trying to grow, but a lot of things can go wrong growing from scratch. The soil needs lightly watering a couple times a day for a few weeks. If you've a large lot this is a pita.

The late summer into fall is the best time to overseed and/or start cool season turf grass like Kentucky bluegrass or fescue. Getting too late for that now. About the last two weeks in August or thereabouts in much of the Midwest for example. It is difficult to get bluegrass going in the spring. It seems a little counterintuitive but springtime means the grass seed has lots of competition with weeds among other things. An august sowing means it will get mowed a few times and go into winter just fine. The following spring you won't be able to tell it was a bare spot.

Teds said:

Where do you live? What kind of grass is suitable in your area. Growing a lawn is 90 per cent preparation. Were it me, I'd recommend sod. I don't know what kind of grass you're trying to grow, but a lot of things can go wrong growing from scratch. The soil needs lightly watering a couple times a day for a few weeks. If you've a large lot this is a pita.

The late summer into fall is the best time to overseed and/or start cool season turf grass like Kentucky bluegrass or fescue. Getting too late for that now. About the last two weeks in August or thereabouts in much of the Midwest for example. It is difficult to get bluegrass going in the spring. It seems a little counterintuitive but springtime means the grass seed has lots of competition with weeds among other things. An august sowing means it will get mowed a few times and go into winter just fine. The following spring you won't be able to tell it was a bare spot.

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thanks i think i will have to wait until next year to do something. i want to see now if what i did this year will take off next spring. if not i may rototill the back yard up first and rake it all level and reseed in the fall. but for now the areas i did do may just be ok next spring and i will not have to get more involved in it. bp.

corvairbob said:

ok i have a question is there a grass that i can apply that will just take over an existing lawn and still look good next year? i water 2 times a week in the evening for 30 minutes per zone. thanks

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If you are looking for grass that will take over a lawn and spread on its own, take a look at Zoysia But there are some drawbacks to it

thanks i tried that type of grass years ago in another locating in the same county and i could not get it to grow. they sent me replacements and still nothing so i tried one more time and i planted it in the complete square they sent me and it grew but it did not spread a bit. i figured it arrived dead both times and by cutting the square into the 1" cubes they said do do was more than the rass would take. i took the complete section they sent the last time and planted the complete pc. and it did grow i was going to cut it into small squares like they said to do and plant it around a small area to see if it would spread but the whole square did not even spread an inch from the original size. so i just gave up on it. i may try it again sometime and see if it does better in the soil i have now miles away. not going to hold out much but it might be worth a try. i asked one time about starting from seed and those people said it is hard to start from seed. thanks

At first you have to find which types of grass available in your area. Zoysia grass, Tall Fescue and Kentucky Bluegrass are my favorite. I have Zoysia grass in my lawn. It was very hard to collect for me. But they are really beautiful.

thanks a lot for the ideas. next summer i'm going to lowes and get 50# of the sun and shade. then i have a 50 50 chance that the grass grows. i did that a few years ago in the front yard where i had trees shading the yard and it turned out good. but i had a friend tell me that perennial rye grass was what would work. well it grew fast and now it is dead. so i will just go with what worked before. i was hoping i could just sow it over the lawn and have it take over but it looks like i will have to till the yare and just start over. i will do it in 1/4 sections so i will still have a yard. again thanks for the ideas.

Never mind

I strongly recommend against rototilling a lawn to renovate it. It's a lot of work, brings a lot of rocks to the surface that need to be dealt with and destroys the soil structure. Depending on the depth of your topsoil you very well may end up bringing the poorer underlying subsoil to the surface too. Just not a good idea and a lot of unnecessary work IMO. You're much better off just slit seeding in most cases. You can do a couple of passes without seed in the hopper to level things out, then add seed and make a couple more, with the second one perpendicular to the first.

In cases where the lawn is uneven or has a clumpy growth habit I have have better success with using a power dethatcher (power rake) and then broadcast seeding after hand raking. A slit seeder and a dethatcher are very similar but use different styles of blades, with the slit seeder ones being fixed and the dethatcher being flail-type. You can set the dethatcher a bit deeper, but you will also have a lot more grass/debris to deal with.

I've done two yards using a rototiller and never had any of those problems.

Or you just don't know that there's an easier and better way

This is what I do for a living...lawn care and landscaping. Rototillers are fine for gardens. There is no reason to till that deep and have to regrade the whole area. I have never seen a lawn care professional rototill a lawn to renovate it in the 15+ years I have been business. I have seen "Harley Rakes" used. I've also seen a Toro Dingo with a soil renovator attachment used. Pretty cool machine really. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIGrYSWplxs

Here, check this out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNJVbZ7hT8k

Here's the deal: I have a rototiller; I don't have a slit seeder.

I tend to use what I have on hand and it worked pretty well. My experience tells me the rototiller method works pretty good without having to rent a piece of equipment I don't own.

cpurvis said:

Here's the deal: I have a rototiller; I don't have a slit seeder.

I tend to use what I have on hand and it worked pretty well. My experience tells me the rototiller method works pretty good without having to rent a piece of equipment I don't own.

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Understood. I'm in a different situation working for profit where I can just pass any rental fees on to the customer in the interest of keeping my labor down and expediting the project. My experience tells me that the tiller creates a lot of unnecessary work in having to level everything back out and dealing with sods clumps etc., so I was trying to present the OP with an alternative. In cases where I have converted lawn areas into landscape beds I will use a tiller, but I remove the sod first either manually or with a sod cutter.

thanks doug. i understand where your coming from. but my top soil is rather deep. i rototilled some sections last year and i never did get into poorer looking soil. and like one other person stated i don't have access to the other equipment and unlike some i don't have time or profit constraints. i can do this in a few days and rake out the weeds and dead grass after a few days and any stones the appear. and i can rake out the yard at that time. but others may benefit from your ideas. ihave not yet decieded if i'm going down that path i will see it the spring. thanks

Never mind - post deleted