Fall Is the Best Time to Seed Your Lawn in Many Situations

You probably know that the best time to plant trees and shrubs is in the early fall, after the growing season is largely over. This lets the plant establish roots before the stresses of spring and summer.

But the late summer / early fall can also be the best time to seed your lawn.

While many people tend to think of seeding their lawns only in spring, many kinds of grasses will actually do better if they're seeded in the fall.

The biggest determination of when to seed your lawn is what kind of grass you have: warm season or cool season.

Warm Season vs Cool Season Grasses

Grasses can typically be divided up into warm season and cool season varieties.

Warm season grasses grow best in the very Southern part of the U.S., and include varieties like St. Augustine, Centipede Grass, Bermuda, and Zoysia. These grasses will keep growing even in hot weather, but are sensitive to hard frosts.

Many warm season grasses propagate via rhizomes (underground root systems) and are more successfully installed with sod, though some can be grown from seed. Others, such as St. Augustine cannot be grown from seed at all.

Cool season grasses grow best in the Northern and Central parts of the U.S., and include varieties like Kentucky Bluegrass as well as varieties of Fescue and Ryegrass. These grasses grow best in cooler weather, including the fall and early spring. They can survive cold winters well, and tend to go dormant during summers—though extreme heat can burn them.

Both kinds of grass can be seeded after summer, but cold-season grasses do best when seeded in the late summer or early fall. Warm season grasses often grow best when seeded in the spring. This is because they tend to need at least 60 days of growth before the first frost in order to develop large enough to survive a cold snap.

Advantages of Seeding In the Late Summer or Early Fall

There are several advantages to seeding your grass in the late summer or early fall, even if you have warm-season grasses:

• Deeper roots. Just as with other perennial plants like trees and shrubs, grass benefits from having time to grow roots and become established before the stresses of the spring and summer growing and mowing seasons. Seeding in the late summer or early fall gives especially cool season grasses time to do this.

• Weed control. Spring and summer are when crabgrass and other broad leaf weeds often germinate. By September their growing season is often over. By seeding your lawn in the fall you make less room for weeds to establish, and give your grass a head start.

• Better germination. Cool season grasses especially germinate most effectively when the ground temperatures are warm. Spring seeding often means waiting for the ground to warm up enough, which isn't a problem with fall seeding.

There is one additional advantage: If you're considering aerating your lawn to reduce compaction or thatch, it's the perfect time to seed afterward. Because aerating exposes soil, it's a good time to get grass seed down so they can begin to root. Aerating is recommended in the fall, after the majority of the growing season is over.

What's the Best Time to Begin Seeding a Lawn?

Depending on what kind of grass you have, the best time to seed is late enough that the extreme heat of summer is mostly over, but the threat of frost is still far off. For most parts of the country this typically means September or early October.

Earlier than this, and your seed will have to grow while it's potentially too hot, and while the seeds will still be competing with more aggressive weeds.

If you've waited too long and missed the chance to seed in the early fall, you can always try dormant seeding.

What Is Dormant Seeding?

Putting down seed in late October or early November—even if it's still warm—isn't a great idea. When the first frost arrives, the new grass will likely still be too young to survive and will simply die off.

However, you can spread the seed in late November or early December, when it's too cold for the seed to germinate, where it will remain dormant until spring.

The advantages of dormant seeding are that the seeds will begin germinating and sprouting as soon as conditions are right, without you having to wait and decide when that is. The drawbacks are that you'll need to use more seed than you would otherwise, as you'll inevitably lose some to birds. And the seed needs to have good direct contact with dirt in order to survive and germinate, so this works best on bare patches of ground or in areas where you've exposed some of the dirt by mowing very low and loosening the soil surface.

You Might Also Like

• 70 Impressive Tiny Houses That Maximize Function and Style

• 30+ Paint Colors That Will Instantly Transform Your Kitchen