Lawn seeD

weirdjim

hi all
maybe someone can help me with this
whats the slowest growing lamn seed
i heard or read somewhere about it before but cant remember
anyway ill be sowing almost an acre of lawn soon
and dont fancy cutting it every 5 minitues

thanks..

PhilipMarlowe

There's usually 3 grades of lawn seed - simply called No.1, No. 2 & No. 3.
No. 1 will be the finest quality, slowest growing but not the easiest to look after. It's really for a front lawn, top quality place - it won't take much traffic/usage.
No. 3 will grow the fastest and take the most wear...
No. 2 is the best balance between good looks and good usability...

Watch out for possible drought at thus time of year if you are going to seed a new lawn. When the seed germinates, the roots will be so close to the surface of the soil that they won't have access to water and you will probably need to irrigate (pain in the arse). You'd be best advised to postpone until the autumn.
In the meantime, plan out how you are going to prepare the area & kill the weeds before you sow the seed.

conorb56

what kind of lawn seed will give that golf course look?

daveg

Originally posted by Licksy
There's usually 3 grades of lawn seed - simply called No.1, No. 2 & No. 3.
No. 1 will be the finest quality, slowest growing but not the easiest to look after. It's really for a front lawn, top quality place - it won't take much traffic/usage.
No. 3 will grow the fastest and take the most wear...
No. 2 is the best balance between good looks and good usability...

Watch out for possible drought at thus time of year if you are going to seed a new lawn. When the seed germinates, the roots will be so close to the surface of the soil that they won't have access to water and you will probably need to irrigate (pain in the arse). You'd be best advised to postpone until the autumn.
In the meantime, plan out how you are going to prepare the area & kill the weeds before you sow the seed.

Aint that the truth :rolleyes: We sowed our lawn (1/2 acre) in April of this year... just before the heatwave. We had to water the grass (again 1/2 acre) every night. It was a royal pain in the arse.

Anyway I would recommend grade 2 for front and back lawns.

ShaneOC

Originally posted by conorb56
what kind of lawn seed will give that golf course look?

1. Get a spade.
2. Go out of your house.
3. Turn right.
4. Turn left.
5. Follow the road for a bit.
6. Hop over the wall.
7. Dig up enough sods for your garden.
8. Retrace your steps.
9. Place the sods on your garden.

Voila. Golf course look without the hassle of seeds or waiting.

Manuel

Hi,
I need to sow my new lawn in the next week. Have almost finished all the hard work, as detailed before in other posts.

A couple of questions please:

1. I bought half a bag of 1-acre grass seed (as opposed to lawn seed) from my local farmer's co-op. Any particular reason why I shouldn't sow this instead of lawn seed? This is for a back graden for the kids mostly, though I probably will sow it all around the house while I'm at it. So I want it to take as quickly as possible and be fairly hard-wearing.

2. How best to apply it? It's quite a small amount of seed for a 1/2 acre. At the moment I've got a child's spade and I was going to try spread it around with that or just by hand.

3. What about rolling afterwards? I haven't seen anyone mention this on other threads. I will have it raked beforehand, I'll sow the seed, then I have the option of bringing in a tractor and roller. Is this recommended/necessary?
As I said it's a half-acre, that's reasonable accessible for a tractor. If I roll it, will that eliminate the need for tape to keep the birdies away or should I do that anyway?

Many thanks.
/M.

squire1

Manuel, I'm certainly no expert but I wouldn't go bringing in a tractor and roller to roll a newly seeded lawn.

For seed germination you need nice light fluffy topsoil so compacting it would just make it harder for the roots to establish. In my lawn, seeded anout five weeks now, I just did a final rake before seeding and then just left it. It has come on great but the weather has been perfect.

I'm not sure of the difference between grass seed and lawn seed, if there is a difference, but ring your co-op and check before you sow. I'm sure they will change it for you if you have bought the type of stuff that cows like to munch.

As for application, it's good to have the seed spread as evenly as possible and this is hard to do by hand. A local garden centre or hire shop should have a small seed/fertiliser spreader that you walk behind. I think you could buy them in woodies or B&Q also. I wouldn't worry about birds too much over a half acre. It would really take a lot of birds to make an impression on a lawn that size. My biggest problem has been rabbits coming in and digging big holes, looking for the tender roots I assume, but they keep the kids amused and it will be easy to repair small patches later.

Best of luck with it.

Manuel

Thanks squire1,
I wanted to avoid what happened in my last house, where about a year after the lawn was sown, it started to sink all over the place, and then when it was too late to do anything about it, I had a lawn that undulated everywhere instead of the nice level lawn that started out. I thought rolling it would avoid that happening, but I really have no idea. Of course it might have been all the builder's boulders that I pulled out of my last lawn every time I mowed that were the cause of it turning uneven. That won't happen this time as I have the stones picked. The ground is quite soft in places and firmer in others as my digger-man did a pretty good job of levelling it by distributing more topsoil to the areas that were a bit lower. I'm a little nervous about what the heavy tractor and roller would do to these soft parts too. You've almost convinced me to forget it.

About the seed, I can tell you now that the bag has a picture of a sheep and a cow on it, but my question really is "so what?" (resisting the pun). What's the down side of sowing grass instead of lawn? I guess I figured grass would be hardier, but again I've no idea. Do you think I should bring it back and get no.2 or no. 3 lawnseed instead then? Of course it was cheaper too

Finally, it's nearly two weeks now since I applied Roundup. I innocently thought the Roundup would literally zap my weeds and they would disintegrate, but now I've got dead/dying red/yellow weeds all around the place. Do I need to pull and clear these or can I sow my grass on top of them? There's not a lot of weed, I thought the rake might pull them up but it didn't take them all. Should I spend a couple of hours pulling up the dregs or is there any need?

Thanks again. I have the whole weekend set aside for the final attack on my new lawn so I just want to make sure I'm doing the right thing. It's become a bit of a crusade at this stage ...

So all advice welcome before the weekend!
/M.

squire1

Personally, I'd go back and change it for No 2 Lawn seed. Basically the seed you have would be used as agricultural seed. It will probably be very course grass but as I say, I'm no expert.

To prevent you lawn sinking you could compact it with a roller first, fill in the low spots with top soil and then rotovate the top six inches, rake and sow. To be honest a big tractor would probably do more damage than good. I had a small water filled roller on the back of a quad bike, I then used a small chain harrow, stone picker, raked and sowed. Luckily I had the equipment available so I don't know how hard it would be to hire.

As for the weeds, you could hire what is known as a Flail Mower, this will mulch up the weeds but you will still be left with 2" or 3" above the ground. However the roots will be dead. In my case, I spread my topsoil over these remnants. If there are not many weeds I'd spend the time pulling them as otherwise they will stay there while they rot away and probably prevent grass growth. You could also try a brush cutter or strimmer to remove the dead weeds.

All weekend eh? Trust me you'll need it but I can testify that doing it right is well worth it.:)

weirdjim

weirdjim wrote:

and dont fancy cutting it every 5 minitues

thanks..

water it with whisky, then it will grow half-cut

Manuel

Finally sowed my grass a week ago and bless 'em my little grasslings have started to pop their heads up. However the thistles have had a head start on them, and I'm just wondering should I wade in and remove the thistles, or just wait a while and get them later with weed-killer? Should I keep off the new grass? I'm just worried about the thistles bullying the new grass and leaving me with bare patches after they're gone.

It's a fairly large area, about 1/3 acre.

Thanks!

convoy

Hi
slowest growing lawn seed is "dwarf No.2"
plus is nice and green

GreeBo

You can also buy a liquid treatment to spray on the lawn to fertilise but slow down growth. They have been using it in my golf club for the last few months to save on daily cutting costs.

To get that fairway look you need a cylinder mower. Any type of grass thats well looked after (feed and watered when droughty) will look like a golf course fairway in a year...if you have a cylinder mower (preferably with a built in roller)

Even a push mower will give you a better finish than a rotary mower. Not really an option for large areas though...

fryup

GreeBo wrote: »

You can also buy a liquid treatment to spray on the lawn to fertilise but slow down growth. They have been using it in my golf club for the last few months to save on daily cutting costs.

which one would you reccomend??

bbam

I'm not sure of the location of your garden so please excuse me...
If you are in a rural situation I'd advise caution on expensive super fine grade seed for your lawn (and these can be real expensive).

Over 2/3 years you will get wild grass seed into your lawn no matter what, it's natures way. These will detract from a billiard table type lawn quickly or leave you with a huge ongoing battle to maintain the look..

My advice would be to go woth a medium grade lawnseed, regular mowing, feeding and de-taching will give an excellant look without huge ongoing costs or exhaustive labour input..

On a side note... Cylinder mowers give a supreme finish but you need a glass like flat surface or the mower will be in bits in no time.