Starting a new lawn this year? You’re in luck! This is the best time of the whole year to plant grass seed. It’s nature’s time to seed a lawn!
Prompt sprouting and rapid seedling growth occur because the soil is warm, and the nights steadily become cooler and longer.
There’s less chance of searing wind and baking sun—and usually, rains are more reliable. There’s time for growing: You can expect to have a pleasantly firm turf by winter.
Seven Steps to Success
1. Avoid raking the seeding surface too fine. This is probably the 2nd worst mistake made by would-be lawn owners (#1 mistake is failure to water frequently enough, Step 6, page 24).
Getting the soil fine seems to be the right thing to do—it’s hard work, a slow job, and the results look so pretty. But it’s exactly the wrong thing to do.
The ideal seedbed is moderately coarse with many particles up to marble or golf ball size. This provides crevices where seeds can lodge and more likely find moisture for germination.
They’ll be sheltered from washing rains, and the drying action of the sun, and there’ll be less danger of crusting by heavy rains.
2. Supply enough of the right nutrients for the sturdy growth of the new grass. Best to add before planting the seed. Use double the application rate recommended for established lawns.
Be sure you use a grass fertilizer —one made to not harm seeds or delay germination.
3. Plant the right blend for the kind of care and wear the lawn will experience—and don’t plant too thickly!
There are three distinctly different kinds of lawns:
- All-purpose
- Able to take the extra wear of active play by children
- The show lawn
Each has its own needs. It’s a real mistake to plant the wrong one.
Do use a spreader to plant the seed. You want 17 to 20 seeds per square inch of bare soil. It’s just not possible to sow grass seed evenly in such small amounts. And seeding unevenly—or too heavily—can lead to trouble.
Correct seeding gives uniform growth into a firm sod, with each plant having an equal chance at growing space, soil moisture, and nutrients.
Nature Sows Grass Seeds on Top of Soil
4. Cover seeds lightly—if at all! Grass seed buried more than one-eighth inch isn’t likely to sprout (nature simply drops grass seeds on top of the soil).
If you cover the seeds, and you may wish to do so to keep them from washing or blowing away, also to shelter them from the sun’s heat during those first hours after the seedling starts to push out of the seed, then use a light combing or brushing action. Dragging a doormat or piece of wire does the job nicely. Roll if you wish, but lightly.
5. Mulch if you can, with peat, clean straw (inevitably, you will be adding some weed seeds), or use one of the special knit cover nets now sold by many lawn supply stores. Mulching is a must if you can’t water.
6. THE CRITICAL STEP — moisture! A good seed isn’t hurt by heat or drought. But once soil moisture induces sprouting, the seedlings can’t survive without moisture.
Ideally, you should water at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. and every evening until the grass is up and mowed once or twice. Wind, as well as the sun, cause rapid drying of the surface.
7. Start mowing as soon as there is anything to cut when the mower is set at 2″ inches. Be sure the mower is sharp—and the grass is dry when cut. Otherwise, too many plants will be yanked out.
Most soils are polluted with weed seeds. You must eliminate the competition for food and water by keeping the weeds mowed off.
Most kinds found in a new lawn can’t survive frequent mowing. Don’t attempt to pull up or dig them.
44659 by Dr. Joseph E. Howland