Raking prior to dormant overseeding

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bolson32
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Raking prior to dormant overseeding

Post by bolson32 » October 13th, 2021, 9:20 am

How important is it? I'm going to overseed about 50k sq ft this fall and, I don't really have a way to effectively scratch the surface. Since I'm doing a dormant seed and not micromanaging a fall seed is it less important? Will the seed work its way down over the winter? I'm sure one of my neighbors has a tow behind dethatcher I could borrow, or should I spring for a 3pt pine straw rake?

https://www.fleetfarm.com/detail/field- ... straw+rake

northeastlawn
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Re: Raking prior to dormant overseeding

Post by northeastlawn » October 13th, 2021, 4:51 pm

I have to grapple with this every fall.

Dethatch and pull out a lot of dead poa-a, or keep my pre-m barrier down and hope the dead poa-a doesnt come back. I have not figured this one out, but......

Dormant seeding is "hail mary pass" at best, so the way it work in nature is that the seed will work its way down to the soil under the snow and germinates in the spring when the snow melts.

You might feel more confident about it working if you dethatched; but would you be bring the poa-a or triv to the surface?

Those are the local conditions in your lawn you have to decide on.

flyin-lowe
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Re: Raking prior to dormant overseeding

Post by flyin-lowe » October 14th, 2021, 9:56 am

I have a lot of experience with seeding/overseeding large areas. I have 3 acres of TTF I have killed off and renovated over the past several years. When it comes to overseeding I have had the best luck in the fall. I core aerate and put the seed down when there are several days of rain in the forecast. Many people on here will tell you not to aerate. I have done it several times and then use a good Pre M in the spring and found the benefits of the increased germination outweigh the negatives. I think you might be better off waiting until next fall, as others have said, dormant overseeding has very mixed results.

bolson32
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Re: Raking prior to dormant overseeding

Post by bolson32 » October 14th, 2021, 10:16 am

flyin-lowe wrote:
October 14th, 2021, 9:56 am
I have a lot of experience with seeding/overseeding large areas. I have 3 acres of TTF I have killed off and renovated over the past several years. When it comes to overseeding I have had the best luck in the fall. I core aerate and put the seed down when there are several days of rain in the forecast. Many people on here will tell you not to aerate. I have done it several times and then use a good Pre M in the spring and found the benefits of the increased germination outweigh the negatives. I think you might be better off waiting until next fall, as others have said, dormant overseeding has very mixed results.
I assume you don't water at all then and still get decent germination? That's why I elected to go with dormant seeding instead of fall, but it has been pretty wet, actually. I'm going to give dormant seeding a go, knowing full well it might fail. That's okay. I have a ton of bare spots I'd at least like to give a chance to fill out next year.

I'll probably also run a dethatcher over it to give it a little scuff and then make sure to mulch everything down good. I'm not terribly concerned with anything germinating now obviously and I plan on using Tenacity as a Pre-Em in spring instead of prodiamine since I'll still likely be getting new grass coming up, hopefully.

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Re: Raking prior to dormant overseeding

Post by Masbustelo » October 15th, 2021, 4:59 am

My experience was that seed wouldn't work down and germinate through the thatch. I had to use an aerater to punch through. Then dormant seeded and got great results.


bolson32
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Re: Raking prior to dormant overseeding

Post by bolson32 » October 15th, 2021, 7:09 am

Good to hear someone got good results with it! I actually had it aeravated a couple of weeks ago. That broke up lot of thatch and left a pretty easy path to the dirt now that I think about it and looked again. I still might run a dethatcher over it, but we'll see.

flyin-lowe
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Re: Raking prior to dormant overseeding

Post by flyin-lowe » October 15th, 2021, 12:22 pm

I might get flamed for this but here is what I have learned, after renovating my 5 acre property one acre at a time. Yes water is important but not as important as some people claim on here. Many will say if your seed dries out at all before it sprouts the seed is no longer viable. When I have killed off, leveled, and then reseeded areas of my yard (I did one acre sections at a time) I had to rely on mother nature for water. Some years during reno's I got good amounts of rain, some years I did not.

This summer I had an area in an acre of my yard I renovated a couple years ago that were pretty bare. I put down seed the first week of August. We had record heat and dry times after I put the seed down. This part of my yard is about 500 feet from my house and I don't have enough hose to reach all of the areas I seeded. During the first couple weeks after I put the seed down high temps were in the 90's and it only rained a couple times. The news was reporting it was one of the hottest driest openings to August in a very long time. There were a couple of the spots I did not water at all and as of today they do not look any different than the spots I was watering twice a day. There was a heavy dew each morning but with sun and temps in the 90's it would dry out quickly. Once we started getting more constant rains and the seed filled in. This year I seeded another acre in the spring and it came in great until that stretch in the end of July and August which stunted a lot of it. I aerated and overseeded that acre mid September and it has come in really good. We have definitely gotten some good rains but by no means did the seed stay damp the entire time prior to sprouting.

bolson32
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Re: Raking prior to dormant overseeding

Post by bolson32 » October 15th, 2021, 9:05 pm

Honestly I hope you don't get flamed and that's really good to hear. It kind of lines up with my idea on it as well.

Obviously if you have small areas, you can do things ideally. If you do overseeds ideally, scalp, remove clippings, seed, peat moss, water lightly, etc you'll get a ideal results. 80-90% germination.

If you have large areas and don't do them ideally, you probably won't get ideal germination... but I have a hard time believing you're going to get 0% germination. If the seed hits the soil, you're going to get some. Maybe that's 20%, maybe that's 70%, likely somewhere in between. But I have a hard time believing it's just not worth doing. Maybe you have to do it twice to get the same results, that's not THAT big of a deal.

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Re: Raking prior to dormant overseeding

Post by gryd » October 17th, 2021, 11:09 am

I wouldn’t disturb the soil. Bring down the mowing height and spread your seed before the snow. It will work its way into the soil. I plan to dormant seed this year as well.

bolson32
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Re: Raking prior to dormant overseeding

Post by bolson32 » October 17th, 2021, 6:37 pm

You'll have to let know how it goes. I haven't really decided yet tbh. There's plenty of bare spots so I don't think there's much to worry about either way.

flyin-lowe
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Re: Raking prior to dormant overseeding

Post by flyin-lowe » October 21st, 2021, 8:34 am

What I did with my most recent was I put the seed down early this spring a few days before a late snow was forecasted. I know it's not always an option with the ground being wet but late winter/early spring this year there was a snow in the forecast. The ground was firm enough I was able to get the seed down on an acre, then a snow came in then the warm up started. It worked out well and I think you will have better success then having the seed lay on the ground all winter long.

bolson32
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Re: Raking prior to dormant overseeding

Post by bolson32 » October 22nd, 2021, 10:23 am

Yea, I plan on waiting to see when that first snow is going making an appearance. If it's early December or late November I'll probably just seed. But if it comes in the next couple of weeks I'll hold off until spring. We usually get a lot of snow so I don't really want to chance not being able to get it down or have to spread it when it's sloppy.

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Re: Raking prior to dormant overseeding

Post by GermanShep » November 5th, 2021, 9:04 pm

I personally am a big fan of dormant seeding as I have usually had good luck with it in past years and I have done it several times at different properties I have owned. I missed my seeding window this past fall just because there was so much going on this past summer and fall I knew that a good successful over seeding project would not work out for me so I plan on dormant seeding this winter. I did do a dethatching of my lawn this fall in early October to remove any thatch I had which wasn't much because my lawn is young. We just moved in to a new home this past spring and the contractor had laid down a nice quality turf however some areas did not do well due to the drought we had in Minnesota this summer and we had watering ban so that is my reason for doing a winter dormant seeding. I didn't core aerate because I did not feel I would be lacking a good seed to soil contact with a thin turf in the areas that did not so well which is mainly my back yard as the snow in MN is usually wet and heavy enough to push the seed down over the winter months. I am watching the weather closely these days and I plan on dropping my seed right before the first heavy snow fall is predicted and then let nature take its course. This spring I plan on using Mesotrione to control any weeds that come up in my back yard were I am dormant seeding. I will be using Barricade pre-M on the rest of my lawn were the turf is doing well.

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Re: Raking prior to dormant overseeding

Post by Green » November 30th, 2021, 10:23 pm

I think this thread can be summarized by a few ideas:

-seed to soil contact is important

-weather conditions matter

-seed in nature is definitely not kept perpetually wet and much of it survives and germinates

-soil moisture can keep seed moist in many cases as it is protected from drying out if covered, as can dew, plus sporadic rain

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