So I know the best time to plant or overseed cool season grass is September/October but I have a situation where it never seems to work out for me due to a large hickory tree right at where I'm trying to overseed. It's either dropping a shitload of nuts from July-September or it's dropping a shitload of leaves from September-November. Either way there is way too much going on for any sort of overseeding there.

I read that some people actually overseed their lawn in the late fall or even early winter and the snow and freeze/thaw cycles help the seed to get pushed down into the soil and the idea is when warm spring weather comes back around it's ready to start germinating.

I'm thinking of trying this but wanted to see if anyone here had tried it before and did you have any success?

It should work but you can’t put any preemergent crab grass preventer down in early spring. Crabgrass preventer will take careful timing and be done after your new grass has germinated.

Man, if I didn't have crabgrass...

Never heard of it this early. Frost seeding is usually done late winter or early spring.

When I lived in the Upper Midwest, I frost seeded some Kentucky Bluegrass into a thin section. That section wound up thicker.

I've done it in Kentucky when we lived there. I was told to do it in late February or early March just before the last snowfall. The melting snow will pull it right into the ground. As I recall, it was successful.

That is the way farmers used to sow oats. In Feb Right before a snow was even better. I'm talking Midwest, central Ill.

Ok thanks for the feedback, I’ll give it a shot and wait until February

I’ll let ya know in the spring …..I cut a section that was thin to 1 inch a few weeks ago, ran a plug aerator around and over seeded it….I do see a lot of new grass has germinated so hopefully it will be a little thicker/fuller next year

It’s the only way I can get a new grass to grow on my property.
Because I have a shit ton of leaves, if I plant in September, I normally end up killing the new grass in the process of keeping up with the leaves going into fall.
So, after all the leaves are gone, around Thanksgiving, I aerate and then drop my seed and then don’t touch the lawn.

I just tilled, added 4 truck loads of topsoil, regraded and seeded/strawed a bunch of my back yard.

Well guess what… only sprinkles for rain since! We are now at 34 days without a measurable rain… the historic average for us is once a week for the first two weeks of OCT and more often than that in the last two weeks.

It was the recommended time to sow and I felt comfortable getting it started off via watering.

The city called last week to say I had a leak and to call a plumber… Nope… afraid not. No leak


The new grass does look pretty good so far.