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rth a popular blend contains fine bladed perennial rye grass, fescue, and blue grass. Keep in mind that it takes blue grass seeds 28 days to germinate, while most perennial rye grasses germinate in 5 or 6 days, so you never want to plant a lawn that is 100% Kentucky blue grass. Before the blue grass seeds have a chance to germinate, every kind of weed imaginable will already be actively growing in your lawn.

With a blend, the faster germinating grasses come up quick, and act as a nurse crop for the slower germinating seeds. Having a blend also gives you some protection in case some new pest comes along that attacks certain types of grasses.

Lawn care tips continued . . .

People often ask if they have to have their lawn hydro-seeded in order for it to be nice. The answer is no. Hydro-seed is not some kind of magic formula. It is nothing more than a fancy way to apply grass seed. A hyrdo-seeder is just a machine that mixes water, grass seed, fertilizer and mulch into a slurry that is sprayed onto your lawn. The ingredients are exactly the same that you would use if you seed by hand, with the exception of the mulch.

And contrary to popular belief, hydro mulch is no better than good old fashioned straw. In my opinion straw is a much, much better mulch. The primary advantage to hydro-seed is that the grass seed is thoroughly soaked before it is applied, which assures germination. That’s a huge advantage if your seeding along a freeway where it is not practical to wet the seed after it has been applied. At your house, it really doesn’t mean much. Hand seeding works just fine.

With either method, you still have to water just as much once the seeding is done. Many people are lead to believe that hydro-seed doesn’t have to be watered as much as hand seed. This is a huge misconception. If you fail to water hydro-seed once it is applied, it will still germinate and little tiny grass plants will appear. But just a few hours without water on a hot day, and those little tiny grass plants will wither and die. This is a big problem because once the seed has germinated, it is spent. All the water in the world will not make that spent seed produce another grass plant.

Hydro seed has its benefits, but for the residential lawn it’s not all that important. Why do I claim that straw is a better mulch than hydro-mulch? Think about how the hydro-mulch is applied. It is mixed with the seed, fertilizer and water as a slurry, and sprayed on the lawn. The mulch has not been applied over top of the seed which is how mulch is supposed to be applied, it is all mixed together. Some of the seeds are under the mulch, and some of the seeds are on top of the mulch. Mulch can’t do much good when the seeds are resting up on top of it. They might as well be sun bathing!

Now think about the process of hand seeding. The seed is spread on the soil, then you should take a push broom and drag it backwards over top of the seeded area. This applies a very thi