Winter Seeding your Lawn
The best time to seed your lawn is in the late summer when the soil is warm and there isn’t much weed competition. The second best time to seed your lawn is winter. That’s right, it is not too late to get a jump on your new spring lawn. There are some benefits to Dormant Seeding in the late fall and early winter:
*Winter Seedings are less reliant on watering because the soil is typically wet coming out of winter and spring rains are likely. Watering come spring however will improve the odds of a successful seeding, especially if we get some dry spells.
*The snow on your lawn through winter will help the seed get deeper under the ground.
*By the time the soil is dry enough to seed in the spring, you usually miss out on good rains that would help seed germinate. Seeding in the winter eliminates that problem.
It may still be necessary to do some overseeding in the spring in those areas where little grass emerges. If the newly seeded areas appear to be a little thin, you shouldn’t necessarily feel your fall efforts were a failure, as it is quite common to have to do a little additional reseeding in the spring. However, do allow enough time for the seeds to come up the following spring.
About KY-31 Grass Seed
Kentucky 31 is a cool-season grass, meaning its most vigorous growth happens during cooler temperatures of fall and spring. Like other tall fescue varieties, KY-31 is best adapted to regions with moderate summers and cool winters. It is particularly well-suited to the south-central U.S. and the challenging turf-growing region known as the transition zone. Where weather runs too hot for many cool-season grasses and too cold for most warm-season grasses, Kentucky 31 tall fescue shines.
Tall fescues generally have greater heat tolerance than other cool-season grasses, but KY-31 offers better heat and drought tolerance than many tall fescue varieties. Its cold tolerance, which is greater than that of perennial ryegrass, also gives it an advantage over warm-season transition zone grasses.
In the years since K-31 moved into the lawn and turf marketplace, many new tall fescue lawn grasses have been developed through research and development programs such as Pennington’s NexGen Turf Research and affiliated university research programs. Compared to many modern turf-type and dwarf tall fescue varieties, KY-31 has a lighter green color, wider blades and a coarser texture.