Think Your Lawn’s Fine? August Is the Time to Reseed—Here’s How Often It Actually Needs It

Reseeding is a preventative measure you can take to avoid potential headaches like lawn weeds. By keeping your lawn thick through reseeding, you deprive weeds of the space that they would otherwise thrive in.

So, while reseeding does involve some cost and some labor, in many cases, you really should be reseeding your lawn more often than you may think. But just how often should you be reseeding?

How Often You Should Be Reseeding Your Lawn—Based on Lawn Type

How often you should be reseeding partially depends on the condition of your lawn, which depends on things like climate and foot traffic. But another factor is simply the type of grass you have: cool-season vs. warm-season. Let’s explore these factors in more detail to try to answer the question of how often you should be reseeding your lawn:

• Cool-season grasses: Reseed these once a year, unless they have become patchy through neglect, lots of foot traffic, or a challenging climate.
• Warm-season grasses: These only need to be reseeded on an as-needed basis because, unlike cool-season grasses, they have rhizomes and stolons that allow them to spread before patchiness or outright bare patches can develop.
• High-traffic lawns: Reseed these twice a year to counteract the high levels of foot traffic.
• Patchy/neglected lawns: If your lawn has been neglected for a long time, you will have to play catch-up by reseeding twice a year.

Want more gardening tips? Sign up for our free gardening newsletter for our best growing tips, troubleshooting hacks, and more!

Signs It’s Time to Reseed

Hopefully, you will stick to a reseeding regimen before you are forced to take action to fix problems. But where such forethought is lacking, there will be warning signs that pop up to let you know that you need to reseed, such as:

• Weeds start to take over: It’s normal to see a weed here and there in the lawn, but when the weeds come in bunches, it’s a sign that you haven’t been faithful about reseeding.
• The grass starts to thin out: If your grass doesn’t grow as thickly as it used to, it is essentially crying out to be reseeded.
• Your lawn loses its vitality: A lawn can last for a long time, but nothing lives forever. Your lawn may slowly lose vitality over time (for example, it won’t grow as quickly as it used to). That’s a sign it needs the reinforcements furnished by reseeding.

How to Reseed for the Best Results

Preparation is key to successful reseeding. Your main task is to ensure that your grass seed will fall in a place where its chances of germinating are maximized. Mow the lawn to begin, then rake it vigorously. Raking will take care of two things:

1. It will remove the grass clippings (assuming you don’t have a mulching mower).
2. It will remove lawn thatch.

Sprinkle a 1/2-inch layer of compost over the lawn. This will give the seed something to root in.

When spreading the seed, aim for optimal coverage by pushing the spreader in all four directions. Because this entails covering the same ground twice, cut the recommended overseeding rate (found on your seed bag) in half and fill your spreader accordingly.

Push the spreader north to south, then south to north, until you’ve covered the whole lawn; then push it east to west and west to east, again covering the entire lawn.