LESLIE: Alright. Now, we’re going to talk to Lisa in Ohio who’s doing some landscaping. What’s going on in your yard?
LISA: Well, we don’t have one, for starters. (laughing) We just built a new home.
TOM: That would be a problem.
LISA: We have about a half of an acre that we need to put grass in and just were wondering what your recommendations are for an Ohio yard.
TOM: Well …
LISA: How do you put in a good yard?
TOM: Do you have a sprinkler system?
LISA: No.
TOM: No matter what you do …
LISA: And we won’t put one in either.
TOM: Yeah, no matter what you do, when you’re starting a yard, watering it is absolutely critical.
LISA: OK.
TOM: So you better get used to dragging out the hoses.
LISA: (chuckling) OK.
TOM: There’s really three options. You can seed it; you could hydro seed it; or you could sod it. Seeding, of course, is standalone. There’s a lot of good technology in grass seed, today, that’s going to make it germinate as quickly as possible. Hydro seed is where you have the seed that’s mixed in with sort of a fertilizer solution that’s usually green. It’s professionally installed and it sticks a little bit better and grows a little quicker. Builders often use it to start new yards. Or, of course, you could sod it, which is the fastest way to go.
But whatever those solutions are that you choose, you have to make sure that the yard has good drainage so it doesn’t pond, because that’s what’s going to really kill that seed. And that, after you put it down, you keep it watered. I mean a lot; until it really knits. The best time to do this is the fall; not the summer. Because if you do it in the summer, the sun is just too intense for those young, very fragile roots. If you start seeding in, say, September or October, you’re much better off because you get a few months for that to really take root and then, you know, another couple of months before it gets really hot in the spring the next time around.
LESLIE: There’s a great website, Lisa, called Grassing.com. Grassing.com. And it leads you to several sites that will help you to purchase lawn seeds … a variety of seeds for your area. But that’s a main website that’s devoted to when to seed, how to seed, how to fertilize, how to water. So it might really help you to narrow down, regionally, what it is that you need to do that would work best for your type of environment in Ohio.
Leave a Reply