For most of us, fall is for college football (go Dawgs!), cool, crisp air in the mountains, and raking leaves that fall and seem to get everywhere.

It is also a time of year when many people consider overseeding their lawns so they have a nice green carpet of grass all year long.

Over the years, annual ryegrass has been used to overseed a lawn, but lately the trend has moved to perennial ryegrass because it generally has better turf qualities, handles insects and diseases better and it is easier to manage.

You will want to use about 5 to 10 pounds per 1,000 square feet in order to achieve a successful wintertime lawn. One thing to keep in mind is to look for “certified” (blue tag) seed that is free of annual bluegrass. It may be a little more expensive, but it will save you both time and money in the long run. If you go with the higher seeding rate, obviously you will have a quicker grow-in during the fall, but it may create more problems during spring transition.

The big question that comes to mind is when overseeding can be done. There are a few clues that you can use to help time it. Soil temperatures at a 4-inch depth should be approaching 75 degrees F. Another way to figure when the timing is right is when night temperatures are consistently in the 50s and the daytime temperature at midday is below 70. If you go strictly by the calendar, overseed about two to four weeks prior the average annual first killing frost date.

Overseeding success depends on good soil seed contact. Seedbed preparation requires close mowing, with some light vertical mowing and removing as much of the loose plant debris from the surface. The better job you do at this, more of the overseeding will take, but it will also mean a harder time for your warm-season grass to transition from dormancy. It becomes a fine balance that has to be found based on what you want from your lawn.

Just like any other type of planting, watering the seed becomes critical. In the beginning, water lightly but frequently in order to make sure you keep good soil moisture so the seed will germinate. This may mean three to four waterings in a day. Even though you may be watering every few hours in the beginning, the total amount of water applied usually will be less than a half an inch.

Once you begin to see the grass emerge, reduce the number of times you water, but increase the duration until you end up watering an inch or so of water only once or twice a week, if needed.

Mowing and fertilizing should happen about two to three weeks after germination. Mow the new stand of grass when it is about a third higher than you want it. Fertilize once you know you have a good stand established so the warm season grass underneath it is less likely to compete.

As a good rule of thumb, apply no more than one pound of nitrogen per 1.000 square feet at a time. If a fertilizer is 32 percent nitrogen, apply roughly 3 pounds of it to get 1 pound of nitrogen over the lawn.

A successful lawn year-round is all about the details and understanding that, more often than not, things are done based on weather patterns and temperatures rather than the calendar.

Michael Wheeler is county extension coordinator for the UGA Cooperative Extension in Hall County. You can contact him at 770-535-8293, www.hallcounty.org/extension. His column appears weekly and on gainesvilletimes.com/life.