Seeding a Lawn How to Seed a Lawn | Aerate Lawn

When seeding a lawn, you want to start with the best soil possible. If it is a new area of lawn, you want to use a minimum of 4 to 6 inches of topsoil. You should have all of your soil delivered and then spread it on top of your existing soil. It is also good idea to use a rototiller and till it into the existing soil. Seeding a lawn requires careful preparation of the soil. If you decide to use new soil, use a soil roller to roll over on your lawn until you no longer see any footprints. Then, you want to over seed your lawn either by using a drop spreader or a Rotary spreader.

When seeding a lawn, make sure to follow the directions as indicated on the package to get the best results. You need 3-4 times more seed with a new lawn then you need if you are just over seeding. Different types of grass seed come in different sizes, so the rate of application will vary, based on the size of the seed and the amount of ground you want to cover. Youll want to apply about 7-10 pounds of grass seed per thousand square feet for new lawn installation and about 2-3 pounds per square foot when you are over seeding. (Kentucky Bluegrass requires less seed.)

Lawn experts recommend you get a soil test before applying lawn seed to decide whether your soil is too acidic. If you are adding topsoil from a nursery , youre probably okay without doing a soil test. Most nurseries that deliver soil will usually have pretty good quality. If you are just doing lawn seeding to fix spots or parts of your lawn that are sparse, rather than seeding a new lawn, you want to make sure to use a layer of light topsoil as a dressing, or else use peat moss to cover-up the seed and help it to germinate more quickly. This help to keep the lawn seed moist, but it will also help keep birds from devouring it. I always recommend that you put down starter fertilizer at the same time you are seeding lawn. The advantage of using starter fertilizers that helps the grass to establish itself faster, this often leads to better results, because you dont have to continue watering your lawn three times a day to have good results. Once the lawn seed has grown in, you can water your lawn at the same amount you normally would.

When to Seed Lawn Lawn Seeding

It is important to know when to seed lawn to get the best results. Essentially, there are two different types of grasses. Warm weather grasses tend to do really well when you plant them in the spring time or the early summer. This is probably the best time of year for you to plant a new lawn. Cool weather grasses can do just fine in the spring, (if you are careful about the weeds) but they also do really well during the fall. If you are planting this type of grass seed, you want to either planted in the beginning of the spring, or in the beginning of the fall. (* I just completed reading two books that said to over seed your grass in the fall if it is cool weather grass. However, after having eight years of landscaping experience in Portland, Seattle, and Idaho, I think that the spring time works just as great for cool weather grasses!)

When You Learn How to Seed Lawn, You Want to Wait out the Weeds

When you are seeding a lawn, you want to be very careful about weeds. As a general rule, you can wait out or you can use a mild weed killer to get rid of them. Once you have your soil ready, a lot of people will wait 7 to 10 days for weeds to germinate. Then, they will go out and either spray the weeds, or just hoe them out. If you do this a couple of times, you will get rid of all of your weeds. (Dont use apre-emergent(like Preen) on your weeds, or else your grass wont grow!) Advantages of Seeding a Lawn Vs Using Sod

The biggest advantage of using lawn seed instead of sod is that it is a lot less expensive. Your typical sod will cost anywhere from .20 per square foot to .50 just for the material. If you want a contractor to prepare your lawn and install the sod, you could easily be looking at paying $2-$3 per square foot. This means that 1000 ft. long will probably end up costing you around $2500. Including the soil preparation, you can probably install 1000 ft. of lawn seed for around $200 if you do the work yourself. Lawn seeding can save you a lot of money. Not only that, removing and installing sod is a lot of work. Did you know that sod weighs about three pounds per square foot. And a role of Sod that is 2 feet wide and 8 feet long, can weigh between 40 and 50 pounds.

How to Take Care of a New Lawn

Some books recommend that you cover your grass seed straw. This might work well with warm weather grasses, but with cool weather grasses, straw doesnt do a lot. I recommend that you use a light covering of peat moss. Generally you can cover 1000 ft. of lawn with about 8 ft. of peat moss. After your lawn seeded, cover it with a shallow top-dressing, make sure to water it regularly. You want to water at least twice a day, but if the weather gets over 70, consider watering your lawn three or four times per day. The grass doesnt come up right away. Generally it takes about a week for the seeds to germinate and then they start to grow into seedlings. It takes about 4 to 8 weeks for your new lawn to come in, depending on the type of grass you install and the temperature.

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Seeding a Lawn How to Seed a Lawn | Aerate Lawn