Lawns - New grass seed * No green thumb?

Sprinkled on grass seed mix over top soil, that absorbs water without running off with the grass seed. Periodic watering. Grass popping up in areas and not in others. Hmmm. Did it get washed away, during a couple heavby rainstorms? Hmmm.

Soooo.......sprinkled on yet more grass seed(bought it that day) - buying this coated big brand name mix that claims to grow in 5-10 days - and you can miss a day watering, they say right on the bag (here and there, presumably). Well - 15 days later after religious watering, into a soil that absorbs the water with no run off, and nice long easy sprinkling each watering session, 80-90% of all the days - still no new grass!!!!! What?!!!!!

This is maddening!!!! So I sprinkled on yet MORE grass seed (same stuff), and refuse to miss even one day watering, this time. Did this 3 days ago. Will be in touch.

I'm getting very angry over this. Do you realize what kind of bill I'm racking up with the landlord, by doing all this watering, only to not have any more results than the initial seeds that sprang up that he threw on?

If the soil is absorbing all the water with no run off, then it is very loose. Once the seed is put down, then compacting the seed into the soil with a roller will give the seed a chance to germinate. The seed must make good contact with the soil. In the old days on the farm, we used a heavy roller to pack the soil after sowing small seed such as grass seed or alfalfa.

Be sure to use the roller when the soil is dry.

Is there a seed inside the grass seed? Like um how the part you see might really be the shell, and the real seed is hiding inside? And by rolling it, you are busting the shell, helping it on it's way faster?

I don't have a roller handy. I don't even have one of those hand tampers. Maybe walking on it would help? Can't even recall now the thread I responded to, just below this, about walking on new grass seed. :rolleyes:

Even in Eau Claire, you can rent a roller. They are not too heavy and you fill them with as much water as you chose when you get home and drain it before loading and returning it. - No fancy compaction, but provides a good soil contact around the seed, so the water gets things working and germinating.

Dick

Two posts about rollering. Must be something to this. Gramps had one, and it is in another town by parents. Don't feel like driving there and loading it in my already filled trunk. Hmmm. I'll ask some guys I work for. In a little bit I'm going out to water that grass seed again. :D..... before I do any real work, like work on invoice bills so someone can pay me some money. I thought it was Wednesday yesterday.

I think the ground is junk. Maybe the seeds too.

Here I go there to water yesterday, after I quit posting for the day, and here I watered about 2 1/2 days ago, and the weather has been cool at night and not all that hot during the day (70's ambient). Yet, the ground looked like the desert with all these powdery ant hills that sprung up, and the ground was like blowaway dirt-sand, even though it is gray-blackish in color.

I step on the seeds, even hard, like with my heel, and they do not go in. Yet the ground perks water instantly, and I can stand there and water forever and have the water keep disappearing in notime!

I could stay there all day watering, by going east to west and then start over again, etc., over and over all day, without runoff. So I think the water just disappears as if I never watered!

When I water, I get so happy when I see ground bounce around the seeds, thinking that the seed will get slightly covered by dirt and grow, as that is how it appears to happen when I water. Yet, in seconds when the water dries out, there the seeds are again, all sitting ontop!!

I have spent hours and hours watering, and the landlord could not pay me enough for my time. And yet the grass is thin, and does not appear to have grown anymore than it's 1/4 inch - 2 1/2 inch height. Lime greeny color, not that deep rich blue-green. Each shaft is thin like fly-away hair. It's just really maddening. We have thrown 3 separate applications of seed on it, and all the new stuff has not come up, and only the original is grown in areas, with other spots bare dirt.

And here some other place that never was hand watered, but saw 2 thunderstorms, the way this place did also, is growing nicely!!!! Talking about feeling jinxed. Can you imagine giving the landlord this bill of say $100 for watering the grass and it did not grow? While the area that saw no hand watering, and hence no bill, came up great? I swear!!!!

I threw in the towel. I must have $200 worth of watering in that place - and the grass just sits there doing nothing. And the 2 new seed applications have done nothing but split open the kernels(like separating the chaffe from the wheat, kind of thing).

And there I am on my hands and knees(wondering if neighbors or people driving by or walking theri dog and jogging down the sidewalk thought I was nuts, like in "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids"), looking inches from the ground, to see where the seeds inside went, as I was coming up with nothing but chaffe, and noticing the grains of sand count in the dirt.

It is like that topical hair product that supposedly can grow hair, but on some, I guess, it comes up this paltry thin stunted shaft.

I give up and let the ants take over. Lots of ant mounds in it already, even after I watered heavily just the other day.