Hey fellow Nutmegger, good to have you aboard. Yes, this rain came at the worst possible time for renovations in CT. If I remember correctly there was a big storm on the 14 or 15th, then a couple more for the next few weeks. What probably happened is your seeds and tiny seedlings were washed out by the heavy rains, as evidenced by your growth being the best in the low spots. After a month (with no rain storms) your lawn should be a uniform green of seedlings. What to do now? A few options. You could try putting more KBG down in the bare spots and pray for a warm October and November. You could put down some annual rye now just to get the bare areas covered. It will die next summer, allowing you to overseed KBG in the fall. Or you could dormant seed this late fall/early winter with KBG. It will lay dormant, get worked into the soil with the snow melt, and germinate in spring when conditions are favorable. Normally I would never recommend seeding KBG in October, but if it survives the winter then you will in good shape for next year. If it doesn't, then you will be no worse than if you did nothing. The annual rye idea is just a temporary solution, but it will prevent erosion and limit weeds taking over the bare areas. Some pics of what you are working with would be a great help by the way, I know that whenever I seed I always think I didn't add enough seed early on, only to have it look nice and thick a month later.

tiemco, thanks for the input. I wanted to avoid the Rye seed and purposely put down only KBG. Figured with the full sun, it should do very well.

I have a few pics, but am unable to attach. New to posting in this forum. Any suggestions?

Can you give me a bit more insight into dormant seeding?

Mark

The rye I suggested is annual rye, not perennial. Annual rye only lasts for a season, dying off in summer, so you would be able to overseed KBG next fall. It's useful in your situation because it establishes very fast, unlike KBG, since you don't have much time before the growing season is over. Most grasses do well in full sun, as long as they have enough water and nutrients, but yes KBG usually requires full sun, and isn't very shade tolerant. Dormant seeding is when you seed your lawn in the late fall/early winter, usually before the first snow. At those temps the seeds are dormant and won't germinate. The seeds will settle into the soil with the usual snow melt cycle we see in CT. In spring the seeds will germinate when the soil temps rise above a certain temperature, around 50 degrees. Once you see germination you should keep an eye on things as a dry spring might lead to the seedlings dying, and in that case you should apply irrigation. Adding pics to a post is easy. You need to upload your pics to an image hosting site like photobucket or flickr. Once you do that, your pics will have an html code. Copy the code and put it after the = sign in this phrase:

img src=

You need to bracket the whole phrase with carats, i.e. . When you preview your message and you don't see your pic then you did something wrong. If your pics are too big then you have to resize them on your web hosting site.

tiemco, thanks again.

Here's what I did . . . As you can see from these pics, I had some leftover dead grass from when I mowed low and sliced seeded. I raked it out, as gently as possible to not disturb any seedlings and used a spread seeder to reseed that area. Then I threw down some more starter fertilizer. With all that rain, I doubted that there was any fertilizer left in the soil. I am going to hit it once a day with water and hope for the best. The long, long range forecast has temps in the 60s and lows in the 40s through Halloween. Your thoughts?

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I would water more than once a day. Once in the morning, and once around noon or one would be better. Again, pray for warm weather. It looks better than I thought it would from your description, but you definitely had some washout. Don't expect 8 day germination this time around, soil and air temps are much lower than a month ago.

Keep in mind that KBG spreads via rhizomes, so it will fill in bare spots to an extent. In the areas close to the cameras, it looks like there's at least a little grass growing in the bare spots (so they're sparse spots rather than bare spots). They'll fill in. If the spots that are kind of on the edge are completely bare (looks like it, but it could be the way the sun is hitting) they won't fill in very quickly because they're too big. But if there's any grass growing in those spots, the grass will spread.

Yeah, those pics stink. Really sunny when I took them. The portion of the lawn in the sun looks pretty much like the remainder of the pic. As I am new to KBG, I am unsure how much it will spread. The entire area is probably 25' x 25'. Hopefully the new seed will help fill in and the spring growth will help, come next year. Any opinions on putting down a winter fertilizer, say toward the end of November to December depending upon the weather pattern here in CT?

For about $200.00 you could sod the lawn with KBG! Ever think about that?
I paid $3.00 for a 10 sq ft roll and did a large area that had a weed in it that could only be killed using roundup.
Looks great now.

KBG spread rate depends on a lot of factors. A large dinner plate size area per season is the spreading you can expect from a well tended stand of KBG. I wouldn't drop fertilizer any later than the end of October since your lawn is so young. Late season fertilizer (late November) will increase your risk of developing snow mold.

Thanks again, tiemco. With temps still in the 60s, I wasn't focusing on snow mold. Hoping to get some new germination from the new seed (and maybe still a bit from any remaining seed from the first try) before I need to winterize the sprinkler system.

I didn't price sod before I seeded. Had no experience with sod (plus I enjoyed the anal research of the varieties of KBG and also needed the exercise).

Snow mold has nothing to do with the temps now, snow mold develops under the snow and you will see the effects next spring. A late november fertilizer drop on a new lawn will increase the incidence of snow mold.

OK guys . . . . After a brutal winter, I am wondering what is next for my lawn. Taking Tiemco's advice, I did a dormant KBG seeding just before we started getting snow. I think it was just before the Xmas storm. We have been completely snow covered here in CT and I am just beginning to see my lawn again. What I can see doesn't look promising, but I know the KBG wont begin to germinate until the soil temps warm up.

As April approaches, what would you suggest as far fertilizer, pre-emergent (if any), etc. When the lawn was established (prior to my killing it and starting over), I would typically get a pre-emergent from Lesco and a spring fertilizer. Not sure if that is the correct process now with a young KBG lawn. Any suggestions? I know it is early, but I don't want to miss out when the thaw comes.

The only preemergent you can use without affecting your young KBG and dormant seeds is Tupersan, which will prevent Crabgrass, Foxtail, Downy Brome, and Barnyardgrass. In CT the spring fertilzer drop usually takes place at the end of May. Since you have young seedlings and new seeds down it might be a good idea to do a drop of starter at half the normal rate at the end of April and the other half at the end of May.