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dee824_gw

What's the best seeds to use in Portsmouth, Va?

Dee824
11 years ago

We have overseeded our lawn with Lesco Transition Supreme Blend this past Spring and again this month. I am not seeing favorable results....very little growth in patches. I was wondering if going from a Ryegrass turf to Tall Fescue turf was not a good idea. What can we do to get the best seeds with a better result for our area?

Comments (7)

  • tiemco
    11 years ago

    Overseeding a rye lawn with anything other than rye grass can be a fool's errand. Mature rye grass releases plant proteins which inhibit germination in other turf species. There's a study some golf turf managers did where they tried to seed KBG into a PR fairway and they just couldn't get any appreciable germination. It also grows so fast and tall it steals water and sun from young grass. So you may have encountered these problems in your TTTF overseed. If you want to seed now you can either use PR, or mow what you have low, power rake, kill everything with round-up and then seed TTTF, but it's getting a bit late in the season for that, even in VA.

  • Lawn_Hobby
    11 years ago

    I want to offer a counterpoint. It's not entirely impossible to overseed into rye...I did it last month successfully. However my TTPR/KBG lawn was only 10 months old, so I don't know if that contributed to the success. The other thing is, I ripped up a lot of the rye by core aerating with 3-4 passes, and then verticutting with 2 passes. It looked like a battlefield after, but it worked. I overseeded with TTTF and KBG.

  • goren
    11 years ago

    Quote:
    Overseeding a rye lawn with anything other than rye grass can be a fool's errand. Mature rye grass releases plant proteins which inhibit germination in other turf species. Unquote

    That's a mystery comment since its quite common for lawn specialists to combine grasses in percentages that approach equality in weight--- 40% perennial ryegrass, 40% Kentucky Bluegrass and 20 to 30% fescue--each giving its best to stand up to adversity.
    The writer's location in Virginia allows her to choose a southern type warm season grass to replace one or more of that mixture.

    Grasses have their own best germination time and we must abide by their timetable and not panic when early sprouting doesn't occur. To suggest she kill her lawn just to start over is surely not the thing to do....
    Wait....let nature have a chance.

  • tiemco
    11 years ago

    Well I guess my comments are mysteries to people who have trouble reading. If you read what I wrote, Goren, you will see I said a rye grass LAWN, and MATURE rye grass. Healthy mature rye grass lawns are very difficult to overseed with anything other than rye grass due to allelopathy and rye's competitive natural. Here's that golf course study I mentioned earlier: http://gsr.lib.msu.edu/2000s/2004/040106.pdf . Allelopathy doesn't come into play with young seedlings, so northern mixes that contain PR along with other grass species isn't an issue when seeding bare areas.

    Your notion of adding a warm season grass to replace a cool season grass in a mix shows how truly clueless you are about grass in general. Also, it's true grasses have their best germination times, but right now is the best time for TTTF to germinate in Virginia, so if the OP has had poor results then there is something wrong. Perhaps I was a little quick to answer, as the OP might not have been watering correctly, but the fact remains that overseeding a mature PR lawn is often a fruitless endeavor.

  • grass1950
    11 years ago

    This mystery is how tiemco can figure out what goren is saying.

  • Lawn_Hobby
    11 years ago

    tiemco,

    Do you feel that a 10-month old PR lawn is fully mature? I was thinking that mine wasn't totally mature yet, and that probably increased the success of the overseeding. I suppose if it was monostand of TTPR and was super thick, and several years old, it may not have been as easy to overseed with TTTF/KBG. Perhaps I hit it before it was too mature. (I also let it bake in the heat for a few days without water after scaplping and aerating but before verticutting and seeding.)

    I had another area with a lot of rye that didn't go as well. It was a patchy area with large gaps...some of the rye had died out and the rest had clumped up. And it was mature rye (at least 2 or 3 years old). I had to use a lot more TTTF than in other places. I don't know if allelopathy was the main factor, or if was the heat, or the tree roots in the ground in the area, or a combination of all these, but it was definitely harder to establish the TTTF in that area. In fact, only now that I've added more seed for the third time, is it starting to look like a lawn rather than a patchwork.

  • tiemco
    11 years ago

    For perennial rye 10 months would be considered mature and I would expect it have allelopathic properties, but again its density also plays a role. If it's thin and patchy then it would be much easier to overseed, as opposed to a thick lawn (or golf fairway). If the PR was dormant that would probably also improve success in overseeding.

    A lot of those things you mentioned could have affected your TTTF germination, including using too much seed. The main reason grass seed fails is lack of water or seeding at the wrong time. Growing grass requires the seed to be continually moist. If you don't water enough or the germinating seed is allowed to dry out, then your overseeding can fail. Seeding in spring is not the best time since it means the young grass has to make it through summer, and this summer was pretty bad for any spring seedings for cool season grasses. Late summer/early fall is the best time for cool season grass establishment in most parts of the country, and the success you are seeing now is probably a big part of that timing.