Beginner here and first time using black beauty grass seed after some research here. I’m looking to overseed and fill in some bare spots.
I am really hoping to get my lawn back to normal after an unsuccessful last year using seed from the big box stores.
by Tax_ManianDevil
7 Comments
Check out the [Cool Season Starter Guide](https://www.reddit.com/r/lawncare/s/FetSGi0hFi).
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Late summer/early fall is the best time to seed cool season lawns.
Regardless, if you are you looking for information about how to overseed a cool season lawn. You can find a comprehensive guide [in this post here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/lawncare/s/pUsKCxyvwQ)
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You have a fair share of house shade make sure you have a good amount of tall fescue in the seed mix. It does better in partial shade than KBG or perennial rye. Keep it moist until full germination after a few cuts then put down a lite dose of fertilizer. Me personally would wait until late summer to over seed has a better chance of success then spring. Less weed pressure has all of fall and next spring to mature before it’s first hot summer. You seed now weed pressure is going to be high also crabgrass pressure then the dog days of summer with baby grass with short roots. The odds are against you for a complete success. Next spring you right back to where you started this spring
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Consider using the Scott’s starter fertilizer with weed preventer. It has a seed safe pre-emergent in it (mesotrione, brand name is Tenacity). Without any pre-emergent you will be growing weeds as much as you are growing grass.
It’s probably too late to return it, but I highly advise against using Johnathan Green seed. It would definitely be considered a typical big box store brand.
There are such an unbelievably high number of posts I see in this subreddit that go like “I seeded with Johnathan Green last fall, it went great but what are these grassy weeds I have popping up everywhere?”… Those grassy weeds ARE the seed… Either genuine weed seeds, because the seed is not very clean… Or they’re just very low quality cultivars.
There’s a reason Johnathan Green seed is cheap. Better seed costs more, but it saves money in the long run by being more resilient grass and not containing weeds.
Its no secret that twin city seed is by far my favorite vendor for grass seed. Other good ones are Heritage PPG and united seed. Local mom and pop stores can also carry great seed, just always check the label for % weed seeds and % “other crop”… I’d recommend not using seed that has more than a combined .5% of both. Also, search for the NTEP results of the specific cultivars on the label. [This tool](https://maps.umn.edu/ntep/) makes it very easy to find those results… If a cultivar doesn’t have NTEP trial data… That’s a bad sign.
P.s. Fall seeding is much better.
Keep a ton of water on it or it will all be gone by August 1st