I’ve never overseeded before so would enjoy feedback on my plan.
I’m in the SF Bay area and my lawn is pretty happy, its a tall fescue lawn.
background
I have patches due to grub activity, apparently this year was unusually big on grub activity in my neighborhood. The grubs invited the moles to my yard, as well as birds. it was a bit of a ruckus. Once i spread out the grub killer then the activity went down by a lot. In other areas the grass is just thin, its probably 15 years since someone did anything to the grass besides cutting it.
I have super compacted soil and i have applied liquid soil loosener which did a lot for water absorption, in fact i am quite happy with how well it worked. I have also done a soil test and it was okay on PH and essential minerals and nutrients except it was super low in nitrogen. I fertilized it with a 28-0-0 fertilizer and that made the lawn happy, followed by a few weeks later with a balanced fertilizer.
**So this is the plan **
Mechanically aerate the soil with one of those machines that pulls plugs out of the soil. overseed with a tall fescue seeds. Put on a thin layer of redwood much mixed with planting soil on top of the seeds (a bit more in areas where i need to level the lawn.
Water schedule?
My question to you is, what water schedule should i run? the way my zones are setup i get on average 1 inch of water for every hour of runtime (there are some minor variation but i can adjust for that).
I’m thinking maybe the right thing is to water three times per day, 5 minutes at 6AM, 6 minutes at 1PM and 5 minutes at 7pm? This will put on about 1.75" of water per week on my lawn.
Once i see the first seeds come out i should adjust that to be less frequent and by mid-late october i should do my first cutting of the grass and be back to my normal watering schedule.
My daytime temperatures are in the mid 70s, my night time temperatures are in the low 60’s. Humidity about 30%.
What do you think, of this plan? Or should i reduce my watering to 1.2" per week by watering twice per day? Or do 4 times per day but only 2 minutes per cycle?
Thanks for any advice!
pic of the soil and mulch i’m about to put out on my 30,000 square feet of lawn.
