Hello everyone! In this post, I'm reporting my experience and not really searching for advice (unless someone can tell me how to control the weather).

I live at the very south east corner of South Dakota right near Nebraska and Iowa. When I bought my house 4 years ago, I had my yard leveled to the sidewalk, put in sprinklers, and planted a lawn. Since then, I've read a lot about caring for my lawn, and I think for the most part my lawn is doing quite well, but the grass at the north side of the house is and has been really quite thin. The only time of year it gets sun is when it is too hot for the grass to thrive, and it's in the shade for at least 9 months per year.

I learned that I have a short window of time between the hot weather and the falling leaves where I can overseed. I lay down seed, cover it with a thin layer of mulch, and water briefly 3 times per day. As long as I've lived there, we've never had 2 consecutive weeks without heavy rains during these windows of time. The heavy rains wash the seed and mulch away from the bare areas into the growing grass (the average size bare area is about 4 inches across). This also happens when I've tried overseeding in May.

If I keep trying, I wonder how many years it will be before I will have a successful overseeding experience. Thank you for reading.