Selecting the Right Grass Seed

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Selecting The Right Seed For Your Lawn

The main consideration when selecting seed for your lawn, is the amount of sun exposure and shade your area affords. Most commercial lawn blends are adapted to full sun or medium shade. A special blend should be used in areas where there is less than 3 or 4 hours of sun-light a day, such as under trees, or where soils are dry and poor.

In general, heavy grass seed is most free from unwanted chaff and is the most economical choice in the long run, while cheaper, lighter seed germinates less rapidly.

Kentucky bluegrass is typically considered the best lawn grass, but has the disadvantage of needing a resting period in midsummer and of staining light-colored clothes. It does form a thick turf and will grow in alkaline (or slightly acid) soil, resisting weeds to an extent.

For a putting-green type lawn in a small area on a terrace or in a garden, bent grasses are used. Colonial bent is widely used in mixtures, thriving as it does under less favorable conditions than those required by creeping bent or velvet bent. The bent grasses are low-growing, fast-spreading grasses and need frequent mowing and top-dressing.

Redtop combines well with Kentucky bluegrass because it rests in fall after the bluegrass has recovered, and it does not tend to stain.

Chewings fescue is a fine-textured shade tolerant grass. Maturing late in the season, the various fescues resist midsummer drought, grow well in acid soil and fight weeds.

For new lawns, rye grass, a perennial, is a tough, quick-growing grass which helps keep out weeds until the lawn is under way.

Bermuda grass is used in the South and the Southwest, where soil is sandy.

Whether or not clover is to be used with these grasses is a personal matter. With its white flower and its tendency to grow in patches, it spoils the continuity of the turf, but, on the other hand, it will grow in poor soil, edging out weeds that might grow in these areas.

A mixture of grasses gives better satisfaction than a single species as a rule, because the various grasses are active in development at different seasons. Mixtures stand up against disease and disorders that will attack one grass and leave another alone.