Overseeding: The Perfect Lawn with BigYellowBag

BigYellowBag®’s Black Garden Soil is a mixture of premium soil components blended together at the perfect ratio to provide excellent growth to existing turf and lawns. Black Garden Soil helps to improve the nutrient levels in your lawn when overseeding, and it also encourages microbial activity that helps to break down the thatch layer! (1 BigYellowBag will cover approximately 1200 sq.ft. at 1/2″ depth)

We’re pretty confident that if we were to ask you what your biggest pet peeve is when it comes to lawn care, weeds would at least crack the top three. Dandelions, crabgrass, clover – these are just a few of the unwelcome guests that are always trying to move in on your turf’s… well, turf.

One of the best ways to prevent weeds from taking over your lawn is by not giving them space to move in. You can do this by keeping your lawn healthy and strong, and your best technique to do so is overseeding.

What is Overseeding?

Overseeding is pretty straightforward – it’s growing new grass in the spaces between your existing grass. It’s generally best to do in early spring or fall, not in the heat of summer when your lawn can naturally go into a hibernation state.

What You’ll Need:

• BigYellowBag Black Garden Soil
• High Quality Grass Seed
• Fertilizer (optional)
• Wheelbarrow
• Lawn Mower
• Shovel
• Leaf Rake
• Core-Aerator (optional)

Step-By-Step Overseeding

Mow your lawn, making sure that the blades are nice and sharp, so you’re cutting the grass blades clean and not tearing them.

At this point, you have the option to aerate your lawn. You can do this yourself, or hire a company, but basically it’s going over your lawn and pulling out ‘plugs’ of soil. This helps get more airflow to your lawn’s roots and gives the roots more space to grow. Instead of aerating, you can just firmly rake your entire lawn using a leaf rake. Try to remove excess “thatch” while raking. Thatch is  the spongy layer of grass clippings and horizontally growing roots at the base of your lawn.

Black Garden Soil for Overseeding

We recommend using BigYellowBag Black Garden Soil when you decide it’s time to overseed. Our Black Garden Soil has light and fluffy properties that make it a fantastic growing medium for new grass seeds. We build our Black Garden Soil from premium, individual soil components. This combination has the perfect consistency for improving turfgrass performance. It’s a similar formula to the one used by many turfgrass managers for top dressing and overseeding. The soil is also packed with essential nutrients and organic matter, which new grass needs to grow thick and healthy.

Now, in a wheel-barrow or other large container mix the Black Garden Soil and Lawn Seed together at a ratio of 40:1. An easy way to achieve this ratio is to put 40 shovels full of soil in your container and add one shovel of seed. Spread this mixture evenly over your entire lawn. Your trusty leaf rake will come in handy again, helping to work the mixture down into your lawn’s underlying soil.

Keep Your Freshly Seeded Lawn Moist!

It’s a good idea to keep your lawn moist after you overseed, but don’t drown it either. A good guideline is to keep the top quarter inch or so moist. Your new seeding will require consistent moisture. In contrast, when laying sod, you can irrigate less often but a good soaking is needed.

You shouldn’t mow your lawn until the new growth is at least 3 inches tall. The best part is, that will take about eight weeks. That means that for two months, you’ll have a built-in (or rather, grown-in) excuse to take a break from mowing! Instead, you can use that time to get yourself a cold drink and enjoy looking at your thick and healthy lawn!