Planting And Growing Grass Seed With Aeration

There are a dozen ways to plant grass seed. In fact, if you talk to 10 lawn care guys, you are gonna get 10 different ways that they recommend for growing grass seed in your lawn. For me, the easiest and most effective way is with aeration and overseeding.

If you follow the tips I give you here for growing grass seed, you will not fail! But you have to follow what I teach you here and look at the pictures.

So before we learn about the process of planting and growing grass seed in your lawn, let’s look at the necessities. Here is what grass seed needs in order to germinate properly

1) Proper Heat – grass seed will not grow if night time temps go much below 50 degrees. That means you need to plant your grass seed sometime in September or October depending on what part of the midwest you live in. Where I live in Northern Indiana, we can safely grow Kentucky Blue Grass (21 day germintion cycle) and Perennial Rye Grass (9 day germination cycle) through early October. But if you live in Southern Indiana or Illinois or Ohio, you can get a little later germination with no issues.

2) Moisture – Grass seed must be kept constantly wet during the germination process. That means you need to water at least twice per day for around 20-30 minutes depending on the sprinkler coverage you get. The key is CONSTANT WETNESS!

3) Seed-to-Soil Contact. This one confusing a lot of people. The grass seed needs to be in contact with some sort of soil or organic material on at least one side. It will grow without this factor, but it will not live very long.

Growing Grass Seed – The Process

Here are the tools and supplies you will need.

1) simple rake (thatch rake works fine)

2) core aeration machine (rent one for about $60 per day)

3) grass seed (KY Bluegrass and Perennial Rye work best in the Midwest) You will need 20 lbs of seed for each 1,000 square feet of area you are planting grass seed in. This is very important guys… 30 pounds of seed for a 1,000 square foot area. You could even use more if you want. The key is that GRASS SEED IS CHEAP, so use a lot of it guys! Typically, only about 40% of the seed will germinate, even with the very best quality stuff… so the more you use, the more will grow for you!

4) hose and sprinkler – cuz you got’s to water ya’ll

5) money for water bill – yeah, your water bill is gonna go up.

Grass seed quality is VERY important also. Don’t use anything labeled “landscapers mix” or “quick grow” as these often contain annual grasses or weed seeds. The grass seed below is what I recommend for those who live in the Midwest.

Pennington Seed Inc 118916 Smart Seed Sun And Shade Northern Blend

Pennington Seed Inc 118937 Smart Seed Perennial Ryegrass

In the “before” pictures, you will see large areas of dead grass. At this particular property, there were two main areas I worked on. Each area was about 1,000 square feet. (50′ x 20′) Prior to these pics, the lawn was a dense, green bentgrass lawn. I am not a fan of bent grass, but a little insect called the “sod webworm” loves bentgrass and those little bastards chewed the heck out of this bentgrass.

Once we applied an insecticide for the webworms and let it do its work, we got into the seeding.

The first step was a light raking. Now, don’t go getting all beastly on this step. I don’t need you to remove all the dead grass down to the soil! In fact, we want to leave some of the dead grass in there as it creates a nice bedding for the grass seed. Have you seen guys doing seeding and they put hay over top of the seed? Well, when we have dead grass in place, we have a very similar effect! So when you rake, you want to remove just the loose stuff. At this job, the raking removed about 30% of the dead grass only. Notice, we just used a cheap plastic leaf rake.. nothing too hard.

Next, we used a core aerator and poked a bunch of holes all through the dead zones. Now, pay attention here as this is imporant:

When you aerate, you need to run the machine over the area twice to start with. Go north and south over the area, and then east and west. After you have done that, put grass seed in a spreader and apply it evenly across the area. If you are going with the 30lbs of seed per 1,000 square feet rate that I recommend, then at this point you want to put down about 15lbs of seed.

Next, run the aerator over the area again just like you did the first time. Go north and south with it, and then again east and west. This will not only open up the ground more (more holes) but will also stir around and push down the grass seed so that more of it becomes matted into the soil and/or dead grass.

Next, use the seed spreader and apply the second half of the grass seed, evenly across the area. Now I want you to run the aeration machine across the area just one final time to stir up the seed. You are done — for now anyway.

The last piece of this puzzle is for you to water the seeded area everyday! Keep going and do not miss a day at all. You can see in the pictures here that this method works wonders. The “after” pictures were taken 23 days after the initial seeding and aeration work was complete. The homeowner did exactly like I told him and he watered twice per day everyday. He actually used a timer so his sprinkler would run when he was not at home. Pretty smart I think.

Claber 8410 Aquadue Duplo Dual Hose Water Timer

Tagged as: grass seeding, growing grass seed, lawn seeding, planting grass seed