How to Seed – 2 Simple Strategies

The way you sow your grass seed will vary depending on how your yard looks at this time. Seeding a fresh landscape is very different than seeding one that exists already.

Seeding an existing landscape

Say you have already got a landscape, but it has a couple of places that need to be filled in or thickened up. In that case you simply need to aerate and over-seed the yard.

An aerator is a machine that pokes numerous holes in your yard to help grass grow faster. They come in two varieties. The first style, called a core aerator, removes thousands of cores of soil and leaves them laying about the surface of your yard. This is the most effective type of aerator. Another type merely pushes a hole in the ground using a spike. You’ll find either kind for rent at a local home improvement store or rental location.

To begin with, mow your grass as low as you can safely, don’t fling rocks and dig dirt while using the lawn mower, but get it down to about 1″ tall. This can slow the established grass’ growth enabling the new grass an opportunity to get started with limited competition from the established grass.

After mowing, use your aerator and go over the entire yard around twice. Depending on the kind you choose, the aerator will poke holes every 2 to 8 in. apart. If you’ve a spot larger than 6 in. without holes in it, you will not have very much grass come up in that spot, so go over the yard as often as it takes to be sure you have holes all over.

Once you’re finished aerating, you can start spreading your seed, however you need to accurately measure your lawn first. Everything you do in lawn care depends on the measurement of your lawn, so do it right the 1st instance and write it down to help you refer back to it every time you may need to.

The amount of seed you pick is critical. If you don’t use enough you won’t get the desired effect. Most pros will use 350 pounds per acre for lawns. Divided out per thousand square feet that is eight pounds per thousand square feet.

Rent, borrow, or buy a seed spreader. It will make your job a lot less difficult! Don’t use your hand and just toss it about, you won’t get proper, even coverage.

Spread the seed using 1/2 the required amount, spreading it in one direction, use the other half spreading the other way creating a cross hatch pattern on the lawn. Using this method you’re assured of getting even coverage.

After spreading the seed take a drag of any kind, a bit of chain link fence, a plank with a rope tied to it, or what ever you can drag behind your lawn mower. Drag the landscape, it will push and drag seed into the holes you created and break up the small plugs of soil that the aerator left on the ground, it is going to cover up most of the seed, giving much better germination and also a thicker yard.

When you finish the dragging, spread a starter fertilizer. You can actually do that in the beginning if you need to, it really doesn’t matter. A starter fertilizer has a higher middle number than first and last numbers which means more phosphate.

You’ll need to put down 8 pounds per thousand square feet of a 6-12-12 fertilizer or 4 pounds per thousand of a 6-24-24 fertilizer. It will give the soil the nutrients necessary to germinate and begin a lawn, thus the name “starter fertilizer”.

Following about a month, the new grass will start to yellow off some or even turn pale green, that’s showing you that it is time to fertilize again. Apply 6 pounds per thousand of 15-15-15 it will provide the nitrogen for green and growth and phosphate and potash for root growth and overall vigor.

When the grass is about 3 weeks old you ought to be able to start mowing. Make sure to cut it tall. Fertilizing will need to be complete on a regular schedule.

Seeding a New landscape

If you have a new home and this is the very first lawn, a handful things are different. To start with you need to be certain the grade of the landscape is right. This is variety of tough for homeowners to accomplish alone, so you’ll want to bring in a specialist for this part.

Once the ground is clean and at the appropriate grading you should till up the ground to produce a soft seed bed. Following tilling; fertilize, and seed just as described above using the same amount of seed. Then, cover your complete lawn with straw.

Shake out straw to cover approximately fifty% of the soil from view. This equals around 100 bales per acre.

After you’re complete laying down the straw, it is time to start watering. Soak the landscape until runoff the first watering, followed by daily watering of adequate length to keep the soil wet. If it dries out, the seed won’t germinate.

Another choice for the new landscape is to buy sod. Sod generally is a quick answer to visual beauty, but it can be pretty high-priced!

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