In our previous blog, we mentioned overseeding grass during the winter to maintain a great looking lawn year round. But what is overseeding? Overseeding is just what it sounds like – adding seed over your warm season grass so that the lawn will remain full and green during the winter. It is especially useful if you have Bermuda grass, buffalo grass, Zoysia, St. Augustine or other warm season grasses, which go dormant in cooler weather and can lead to unappealing brown lawns for the winter months.

The seed that you use to overseed your lawn will not be the same seed or turf grass sod that you have already placed in your lawn. Instead, you should use a cool season grass, such as annual ryegrass. When annual ryegrass sprouts, it gives you a green carpet of grass even in the cool southern winters. When the summer heat returns, annual ryegrass dies, allowing your warm weather turf grass to take center stage again – which is highly important. If you decide to overseed with another type of grass that does not die out during the summer, it would end up competing with the warm-season grasses, depriving them of sunlight, water, and nutrients.

Overseeding a lawn made primarily of warm season turf grasses is fundamentally different from overseeding a lawn made up of cool season grasses. With cool season grasses, you use another cool season grass to overseed the lawn, and it is primarily used as a measure to fill in bare patches in the lawn permanently, instead of a temporary measure to keep the lawn looking pristine during a lawn’s dormant season.

Remember that although overseeding can keep your lawn looking alive during the winter, it will not be useful if you are not already satisfied with the appearance of your lawn during summer. If your lawn is in a generally unacceptable condition year round, you may want to start fresh and get completely new sod for your lawn.