On Aug 17, 5:11 pm, Foobar wrote:
On Aug 17, 4:14 pm, Eggs Zachtly wrote:

Foobar said:

[...]

overseed yearly

Source?

--

Eggs

-Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first woman she
meets and then teams up with three complete strangers to kill again. -
Marin County newspaper's TV listing for The Wizard of Oz

Since Fescue is a clump grass, yes, yearly.

http://www.fescue.com/maintenance/index.html

http://plantanswers.tamu.edu/turf/pu.../tallfesc.html


I would submit that the first reference, which is part of
seedland.com, is a seed merchant that has an interest in selling more
seed by saying that you should overseed every year. And even they say
it's necessary for tall fescue, not all fescues.

The Texas Ext Service says:
"Many tall fescue lawns become thin after hot, dry summer conditions.
A thinned tall fescue lawn forms clumps and becomes unsightly. To
prevent this from occurring, it's usually necessary to overseed fescue
lawns in the fall."

"Although it grows best in moist environments, tall fescue has good
drought tolerance and will survive during dry periods in a dormant
state.....Tall fescue is well adapted to the "transition zone" of the
United States where summers are too hot and humid for cool season
grasses and winters too cold for warm season grasses. In the South,
tall fescue is best adapted to those states in the transition zone -
Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia and
northern parts of North Carolina, Georgia and Texas."

So, this advice is coming from and targeted at a state where, per
their own advice, only part of the state is even suited for tall
fescue. And even then, it's at the very end of the zone appropriated
for tall fescue. And it assumes no irrigation during hot dry
summers. So, the summer conditions in TX without irrigation are
going to be vastly different than those of a lawn with irrigation in
CT. I wouldn't be surprised if you did have to overseed it many years
in TX without irriagtion. But that is different than telling
someone that all fescues need to be overseeded every year regardless
of climate or watering. I could show you dozens of agri ext services
that talk about and recommend fescues and don't say they need to be
overseeded every year. I'd also note that seedland.com is located
down south as well, FL I think?, so their advice and experience base
may be regionally affected as well.

Where do you live and what has your experience been? I've had tall
fescues as well as fine fescues, and shade tolerant varieties. My
experience has been that they don't need to be overseeded much more
than any other variety. For example, bluegrass can fill in through
rhizomes, however what usually happens is, there is an area that gets
shot from disease, insects, drought, whatever. And it's big enough
that it then needs to be seeded regardless of whether it's fescue or
bluegrass, because no one's going to wait for it to fill in.

So, my take is, I agree fescues are not going to fill in and self
repair like blue grass. But even clump grasses will grow larger to
fill some modest damaged spots. And from a practical standpoint, they
only have to be overseeded when significant damage has been done and
that shouldn't need to be every year.