Overseeding Your Lawn in New England: Tips and Tricks for Success

Keeping up with annual overseeding will help you grow a thick, healthy, and resilient lawn. But it’s not enough to just toss some seed down. Knowing the proper timing and best methods for lawn overseeding will impact your results.

In this article, we’ll walk you through how to overseed a lawn in New England.

We will cover:

What is lawn overseeding?
What are the benefits of lawn overseeding?
What is the best time to overseed your lawn in the Northeast?
How to overseed in New England?
What are the common lawn overseeding mistakes?
What are the benefits of hiring a pro?

After reading this article, you will have a much better understanding of the tips and tricks involved in getting the best possible seeding results.

What is lawn overseeding?

Overseeding is the process of distributing new grass seed throughout your lawn. It involves applying seed directly to an existing lawn. This results in the new grass growing alongside existing grass. It is a great way to fill in bare spots and thin areas in the lawn.

While we know that some homeowners just toss seed down and hope for the best, this is not a successful method for applying new seed to your lawn. Overseeding is best performed during lawn aeration, which we will explain in more detail later.

What are the benefits of lawn overseeding?

There are a lot of important reasons why it’s beneficial to introduce new grass seed to your existing lawn. Let’s talk about some of the benefits of lawn overseeding.

• You’ll fill in bare spots and thin areas: One of the main reasons why people overseed their lawns is to fill in bare spots and thinned-out areas. While the bare spots are probably obvious and stick out like a sore thumb, those thinner areas might not be as noticeable. But adding new grass seed to the lawn will help you fill in all areas and produce a more uniform and thicker lawn.
  
  
• New cultivars improve lawn health: Most people understand that overseeding will help fill in bare spots but they don’t always know that it will also strengthen the overall health of their lawn. That’s because we are introducing new and improved cultivars of grass that have benefits your existing turf might not have like improved resistance to pests and diseases. 
  
  
• A thicker lawn is a healthier lawn: Even if your lawn does not have obvious bare spots, you still want to make an effort to thicken it up in any thin areas. Again, these are not always noticeable. But there’s no question a thicker lawn is a healthier lawn. A thick lawn will help resist pests and disease better, suppress weeds better, and even retain water better.

What is the best time to overseed your lawn in the Northeast?

Success is also a matter of understanding when to overseed in New England.

The best time to overseed a lawn in New England is in the Fall for a couple of key reasons.

1. Fall is the optimal time for growing new grass. One of the key reasons to overseed in the fall is that this is the best time to grow new grass. The air temperatures are cooling down but the soil is still warm. There is also lots of rain in the fall. While people often ask about seeding in the spring, your new grass will not have much time to grow and establish itself before having to deal with the intense heat of the summer. Summer conditions also mean extensive periods of drought, which can be particularly tough for new grass.
2. You won’t impact weed control efforts. The other key reason why fall is the best time to seed is the fact that it won’t hurt your effort to control crabgrass. In the early spring, pre-emergent products that prevent crabgrass can be applied to your lawn. These products do a great job of preventing crabgrass from germinating in the first place. But the trouble is, they will also prevent your new grass from germinating. If you decide to seed in the spring, you’ll need to skip crabgrass control for that season. That can be difficult to catch up on in future seasons.

How to overseed in New England?

As we mentioned, the way in which you overseed a lawn will have an impact on your results. Haphazardly just tossing seed down is not going to get you the best results, particularly if you haven’t done anything to prep the soil. 

New England soil tends to get very compacted. When you toss seed down on compacted soil, it will just sit atop the soil and may fail to germinate. In fact, it might just become a very expensive birdseed!

This is why we recommend that overseeding is performed at the time of aeration. 

Lawn aeration is the process of pulling small cores of soil from the ground and depositing them back on the lawn where they will break down and recycle nutrients back into the soil. Put simply, this helps to break up soil compaction and allows your lawn to breathe.

It also provides the “seed-to-soil” contact that your new grass seeds require to start to germinate. When the seeds fall into the holes created during aeration, your new grass has the best chance at healthy growth. The result is filling in bare spots and growing thicker, healthier turf.

The type of seed that you use is also important. While you can go to the hardware store and pick up a cheap bag of seed, you likely aren’t getting the best quality seed. A lot of bagged seed contains quite a bit of filler (which is often paper or other additives). It might also be a low-quality seed that has a low rate of germination.

At Seacoast Turf Care, we are using seed that has been determined to work well in local soil conditions. We only use high-quality seed.

What are the common lawn overseeding mistakes?

Now that you understand how to overseed a lawn in New England, you might be wondering if it’s just something you can do yourself.

Unfortunately, there are some DIY mistakes that commonly occur.

• For one, a lot of homeowners fail to perform aeration at the time of seeding. As we mentioned, aeration and overseeding truly do go hand-in-hand and if you fail to aerate, you are likely to get subpar results. It’s quite likely that your seed will be left sitting atop the soil and drying out before even having a chance to germinate. Seed might also get eaten by birds or blow away.
  
  
• DIY lawn aeration is also complicated. While some people do attempt to aerate on their own, this is not exactly a simple yard task. It involves renting an aerator (which is a fairly large piece of machinery that you’ll need to transport) and taking up a day to perform this service. It’s more arduous and time-consuming than people often realize. Often when they calculate the time, effort, and money involved, they realize hiring a pro makes more sense.
  
  
• Another common DIY seeding mistake is using subpar seed. As we’ve talked about, the quality of the seed is going to have a direct impact on your results. Low-quality seed or seed with a lot of filler is simply not going to be able to deliver the professional results you desire.
  
  
• Homeowners also commonly seed at the wrong time of the year. Seeding in the spring can be incredibly challenging as the weather intensifies. It can also impact your ability to use weed control products on your lawn.

What are the benefits of hiring a pro?

At the end of the day, it makes a lot of sense to choose professional lawn care services in Southern New Hampshire, Maine, & Northeastern Massachusetts for your overseeding needs.

Hiring a pro will help ensure that you’ll get high-quality seed that will yield better results. It will also help ensure that overseeding is performed properly and at the time of professional aeration.

In addition, a lawn care professional will also be able to perform other valuable services (including fertilization and weed control) that will help you achieve an amazing lawn. The best lawns are the result of multiple lawn care services performed at the proper time.

Properly caring for your lawn will result in many benefits. With the best New England Lawn Care, tailored to our region, you’ll start seeing a thicker, greener, and healthier lawn.

Choosing Lawn Care Services in Southern New Hampshire, Maine, & Northeastern Massachusetts

When you make a wise choice in lawn care services, it will pay in many ways. As with most things in life, you tend to get what you pay for when shopping for lawn care. That’s why it’s important to do your research and choose a company that you trust.

At Seacoast Turf, we’re not only looking to deliver the lawn care results you’re after, but we’re also looking to help make life less stressful for you. We provide lawn services in the seacoast region of New Hampshire, Maine, and Northeastern Massachusetts.

Want to learn more about what makes us a great choice for your lawn care needs? At Seacoast Turf Care, we service NH towns near Stratham, North Hampton, Exeter and many more. Get lawn care pricing for your Southern NH, Southern Maine, or Northeastern Massachusetts property.