Growing a lawn from seed is for sure one of the best things I have ever learnt to do and its something that's done through a lawn renovation process.
The lawn renovation process goes like this.
- Cut the lawn short, this makes for less grass to pick up from the scarification.
- Scarify the lawn taking a single direction pass.
- Clean up the green waste from the scarification.
- Scarify again lightly to get closer to the rootzone and clean out anymore thatch (if needed).
- Aerate the lawn using a hollow tine aerator, spiking a lawn doesn't do a very good long term job from our experience.
- Level off shallows in the lawn using turf dressing, not all shallows, but any that are around 6-12mm can normally be addressed during the process.
- Over seed the lawn at 20 grms per m2 (as a standard).
- Now use more turf dressing to over over seed at the required rate, which varies between seed types.
- Roll lawn which also helps pack down the seed, improves soil to seed contact.
- Apply a good quality lawn feed, normally we use a 15-5-15 feed which helps the existing grass growth and recovery as well as the new grass development.
Any lawn we renovate we schedule a number of follow on visits to "keep an eye on things" those being correct watering, is there any growth that needs help and the first cut.
We're often growing a new lawn from new lawn seed when we're renovating lawns. The process of renovating a lawn is fairly simple, the most important thing is you need to pay particular attention to seed bed preparation, seeding, dressing and feeding the lawn.
From there the next thing to be very engaged with is watering the new seed, not a lot but you need to keep the seed damp for 7-10 days to get it to germinate.
Here's today's podcast:
Episode Home:
https://www.allgardening.co.uk/blogs/podcast/109-how-to-renovate-a-lawn