A signifcant section of my front lawn has been decimated by my laziness in not picking up pine needles. Yesterday after several hours work they are now all cleared.
I am looking for some suggestions on the best way to reseed those areas. Of some alternatives.
Hopefully this year I will have the cash to take down the two huge pine trees so i dont have to worry about pine needles in the future.
do a ph test since the pines prob affected acidity.
or just put down a round of pelletized lime. then do a bag of whatever Scotts is appr for the season. follow directions (in am with dewey grass etc)
bet that helps
It’s not the pine tree causing acidic soil. It’s the presence of pine trees that indicates soil acidity.
Pine trees provide a lot of shade underneath, and are water hogs. As pine needles fall, they further snuff out the ground below and add more instant-release nitrogen to the top soil than most lawn grass can handle. Domino effect as it were.
If you want to rehabilitate the ground below, you’re looking at a lot of raking, tilling, pruning, testing, and adjusting before planting new grass, of which should be a fescue variety rather than a lawn variety.
For more details, do a Google search on “How to Plant Grass Under Pine Trees.”
Even if you can’t take the trees down, if you haven’t already, limb them way way up. Getting sunlight under there will help a lot. A good sharp pruning saw, and using it correctly, you will be able to take off some good sized limbs. Not a hacksaw not a carpenter saw.
When posting these kind of threads, a general description of your location would be helpful. 
For exampe, mid-state South Carolina, central Florida, etc. Do you live on a coastal plain, sandhills, foothills, etc? Also the specific type of pine and type of lawn.
It probably would greatly affect the advice given.
That being said, I would agree with the advice given by the other posters.
Pine needles are no more acidic than leaves.
At one of my neighbors displeasure when I did house renovations one of things was to redo both the front and back yard that was horribly neglected. I was able to get bring in 10 tons of topsoil by a local distributor in a dump truck thankfully he lowered the bed when laying the soil and spread it out, some companies wouldn’t do that.
Had the neighbor who didn’t hate me help spread the dirt. Then I rented a power seeder from Home Depot added the seed and was happy with the results. I ended up probably paying for everything including seed $550 - $600. I had landscaper companies quote me $3000+ for the job it took me the weekend and a friend to compete. But my yard was in very bad shape so I added 2-3” inches of new topsoil to cover all my lawn which was around $30 a cubic yard delivered. About 1/4 of and acre front and back, now I have one if the nicest lawns on the street now 
Correct. The problem is that pine needles contain turpentine (or rather, the resin that turpentine is distilled from,) which is somewhat toxic to grass.
I guess that’s not surprising. I never cared that there was no grass under our pine trees lol.
It’s actually not good for the trees either. They have to complete for water with the grass. And some trees also don’t like the excess nitrogen if you are fertilizing the grass to try to make it grow where it struggles under the tree.
Last fall I completely tilled up a large area between by house and detached garage intending to replant grass since it was terrible when I bought the house 3 years ago. Got all of that done, looking nice and level and everything. Grass was finally starting to fill in, and what do you know? A damn mole, or maybe two decided to come up and totally wrecked all the work I did. Not happy about that, and I can’t catch the things so I gave up lol.
Lots of great advice. Thanks. The only problem with google is you get a crap ton of conflicting advice. I tend to trust the advice on here more than anywhere else.
Reading all the comments helps me to build up a picture. And yes Safiel I should have mentioned I am in central Indiana.
With the removal of all the pine needles we are already seeing grass beginning to pop back up again. I know that will not fix it on its own but its a start.
Any results yet?
Yes its amazing how quickly grass starts to recover. Still need to seed but looks so much better.
I also discovered how useful a sawzall is. I was able to lift the canopies of my trees and cut down a lot of the weed trees that sprouted over past few years.
My next project will be to build a fire pit.
There is a house in my neighborhood that has three massive spruce trees in the yard. Within the past couple of weeks, they made the discovery that they could regain a whole large swath of lawn space by limbing those trees way up. 
Step 1, cut down the pine tree.
Step 1 - acquire the ability to buy some land and learn to appreciate it first.
dont forget the lime
trust me
it will be hard for grass to grow if sunlight is diminished too. when the pines come down the grass will grow
I had missed that. Cheers mate.
