Top Dressing and Overseeding:
Your Lawn Will Be the Envy of the Neighborhood
The best time to make a plan for a thriving, beautiful lawn is… now. Even as you are in the midst of mowing and maintaining, it’s the perfect opportunity to take steps to ensure that your outdoor space is properly prepared for growth next year and for years to come. Top dressing and overseeding are two effective techniques that we can employ in order to improve and enhance the health and appearance of your lawn.
What do you need to know?
Need to Reinvigorate Your Lawn?
It happens, in spring the situation looks great! The sight of those first green shoots is certainly welcome after a long winter. But as summer stretches on, and your lawn bakes under the sun, you may start seeing signs of heat stress and scorching. Stubborn brown spots or patches may crop up, along with weeds, grubs, and fungus. Your oasis starts to look more like a wasteland!
Top dressing and overseeding are among the best ways to revive your lawn and get it back to peak condition.
What Is Top Dressing and Overseeding?
A beautiful lawn is synonymous with a healthy lawn. Without a great foundation, so to speak, you just can’t create the thick, lush, green oasis you want. It is vital to “feed” your lawn with nutrients. This is what top dressing does.
We apply a thin layer of compost material on your established lawn. This is a terrific way to introduce organic matter – healthy food! – into the soil without adding chemicals. Spreading about ¼ inch of compost helps amend the soil while allowing the existing grass to continue growing. Top seeding:
- Adds key nutrients to the soil
- Corrects soil conditions, allowing for healthy new growth and proper seeding
- Enhances seed germination
- Improves drainage
- Helps level the lawn
- Breaks down thatch (thick thatch doesn’t allow water to penetrate, leads to shallow root systems, and provides a safe haven for insects and lawn diseases).
Now, what about overseeding?
If your lawn has bare spots or is otherwise looking tired, overseeding is a great way to revive it. Here, we plant grass seed directly on the existing lawn. No tearing up the turf or digging up the soil. This helps:
- Fill in bare spots
- Improve turf conditions and ensure they are right for your area/property conditions
- Cut down on the need for increasing amounts of water and fertilizer
- Builds up your lawn’s immune system so it can fight off insects, disease, drought, and heavy traffic.
- Create a fuller, thicker appearance
When to Top Dress and Overseed
To achieve top results, daytime temperatures need to be warm enough to allow for growth, while the nights are cooler. This gives the seeds time to recover from the heat. This is why fall is the best time to get your top dressing and overseeding project done. (Check here for some other great fall services that’ll set you up for year-round success.)
With top dressing, you can do the whole lawn once every few years. Be aware that it does alter the grade of your yard, so it should not be done too frequently. Again, this is another reason we apply a strategically thin layer.
Overseeding can be done every three or four years to maintain a thriving lawn. If you have pets, children, or heavy foot traffic, you may need to treat bare spots as needed.
GreenImage can help you develop a plan that works for your needs and goals. And the best time to schedule your consultation? Now! Fall books up quickly, and we want to get you on the books. Contact our team to learn more about our top dressing and overseeding services.
