To seed or not to seed: Winter Rye Grass

These days the air is getting colder and the sun is going down sooner, and we all know these are signs that winter is coming. But with the cold air comes the hibernation of our lawns.

Photo Source: https://bexar-tx.tamu.edu/homehort/archives-of-weekly-articles-davids-plant-of-the-week/winter-ryegrass/

When winter comes lawns will go into hibernation and turn brown (If you want more information on lawn hibernation click here). If you don't like your lawn looking brown what can you do? One option you have is to overseed your lawn. Overseeding is when you spread a grass seed over your existing turf. In this case, Winter Rye is a common seed grass that does well in the cold. This grass grows in the winter and gives you a bright green lawn throughout the cold months.

Now, there are a couple of cons to using Winter Rye instead of just leaving your lawn dormant. One con is that this grass will die once it gets warm out. Winter Rye is a cold-weather grass and will do not well in the Florida heat. Another major con is that you cannot treat weeds in Rye grass. Weed killers that are normally used for Bermuda grass or Zoysia grass, for example, would kill Winter Rye. Not being able to treat weeds in the winter would put your lawn at risk for more weeds in the spring and summer of the next year.

Here at Easy Peasy, we do not seed lawns. While we do not have a problem with you choosing to seed your lawn in the winter, we like customers to know that weed treatments will not be effective as they will kill the rye if we treat them and will not help prevent weeds in the spring if we do not treat them.