One of the most important parts of organic lawn care is LAWN SEEDING! If you want an organic lawn that is healthy and resists weeds and other problems, you need to get used to growing grass seed. The good news ya’ll: growing grass seed is pretty easy if you follow these steps. (more info on grass seed types here)
In this little step by step here, I am showing you how to rejuvenate a large area of lawn that has been killed. In this example, this lawn area was killed by a pretty major infestation of sod webworm. The key here, however, is that growing grass the way I show you works in dead lawns, and living/healthy ones also. If your lawn is healthy and green, you should still perform these steps every year in the fall time.
Dead area of lawn BEFORE
Same area after seeding, 4 weeks later
Ok, so how did we achieve the above results? I can tell you that it is not difficult, but you must follow these steps. If you veer off in any way, you are going to get little to no success. But if you do what I do here, you will get some great results! Here you go, growing grass seed steps…
(1) Light Raking: Now, this step may not be needed if your lawn is healthy. Of course, if you have big dead areas like here, you need to rake out about 30% of the dead grass. Don’t rake it all out because we need some of it to make a nice planting bed for the grass seed.
(2) Aerate The Lawn: I talk a lot about aeration, and if you are going to have an organic lawn you better get used to it. If you are gonna grown grass seed you better get used to aerating also! I want you to rent a core aeration machine and plan on using it a lot! I want you to aerate the lawn/area twice. In other words, go over the lawn area two times to punch double the holes. The grass seed will fall into the holes, of course, but also the cores that are deposited on top of the lawn are just soil that can come in contact with seed as well. Seed-to-soil contact is one of the keys to growing grass seed successfully.
(3) Spread grass seed: Use a regular lawn spreader to apply the seed nice and evenly. If you are trying to repair and regrow grass in a dead area like in the pics here, you should use 25 lbs of seed per 1,000 square feet of lawn area. However, if you are just overseeding an already healthy lawn, use 5 lbs per 1,000 sq feet. Long story short, seed is cheap so throw it out heavy if you like!
(4) Aerate again: Next I want you to go over and aerate once more. This will be the third time you are punching holes and it will really push that seed around and down into the thatch layer where we want it.
(5) Water water water water! Grass seed needs to be constantly wet to germinate and grow. Now, if you are seeding in later fall or early winter, then just let the seed lay (called a dormant seeding) until spring when rain will get to it! But if you are seeding in early fall, you need to water everyday for 30 days! It does not need a soaking, but a nice misting to stay wet will do the trick every morning.
I know you were hoping for some magic poofy dust here guys, but it is not needed. You don’t even need to add any fertilizer to this mix. Just aerate, seed, aerate again and water it! Look here at the pics guys! Below are some quality grass seeds that I recommend.
