What about you! And welcome to Premier Lawns Videos.
Today we're going to look at the best way to grow grass from seed.
Now the bit of grass that I'm standing - on we killed this off one month ago and we reseeded it out,
I'm going to show you five different methods to grow grass from seed,
and we're going to see what works best. Stick around ....
We get a lot of questions about what's best to cover new grass seed with or should you cover a new grass seed?
So that's what this video is going to be about.
We're going to look at different methods to cover grass see to see what works best.
Now first up, it's important to show you exactly how we got here so let's do that now.
So first up, we have the scarification.
This is just a process where we use this to remove the old grass.
We then run the aerator over the soil and this helps let the air down into the
soil now this is an important step.
Right guys - now I've done a couple of passes over it, so we're going to get the blower out
and clear some of it off and then we'll go again let's do that now.
So just to have a quick look at the soil here folks, I did think that the
soil was going to be pretty poor but that's actually quite good soil lovely and crumbly !
This bit of soil isn't that level - I'm not too concerned about if we can get it level or not
because it doesn't really matter for this exercise. We're just seeing what grows and what doesn't grow.
For this project we have different coverings that we're going to put onto our lawn.
We have just general purpose compost that is peat free.
I don't believe that you should put peat onto your lawn, as once it gets wet it's hard to get dry
and once it gets dry it's hard to get wet. It's going to encourage moss and everything else
so I'd always say if you're going to be using compost - don't use anything with peat in it.
We have some plastering sand. I get a lot of questions about sharp sand so i thought I would - we'll do a channel with sharp sand .
We have some topsoil that's meant to be weed free it's a nice
fine topsoil that we used out in the main lawn, and lastly we have the grass seed.
I'm going to put down a light dusting of seed before I put down any top dressing.
We have the seed down, now we're going to cover some of it - some of this seed is going to
go to waste of course because we're going to be covering it with more material , but we just want
to get all the seed down and make sure there's a good covering - and now we're going to cover it with
some of our materials and see how that goes - so we'll do that now.
So our first one is the the sharp sand, the builder's sand or the sharp sand, the plastering sand.
Plastering sand is "sharp" sand - so that means it's angular, and it's designed to bind together,
so whenever you use sand you're not adding anything to your lawn.
I'd expect seed to grow really well in the compost.
There is some downsides to it. What I would say a big downside to growing seed in compost is the fact
when it breaks down it's going to sink, and it's going to knock off your levels, so if you're, if you're
looking for a level lawn the biggest downside to using compost is - as it breaks down those levels
are going to go away off.
I would expect that the compost, the seed to do better in the compos than this so it'll be interesting to see which is best.
Now as I say there is high clay content in this soil, so it might not suit everybody's needs
so just bear that in mind whenever you're using it.
So now we have our sand we' have our compost, our peat-free compost, we have just weed-free soil
and then we have nothing at all here. I'm going to give all this a stand i'm going to stand all
this in try and get it firmed down. Try and get it half decent we'll stand it all down we'll give it
a light rake and then we'll put down more seeds. So we'll do that now.
So now you can clearly see the different areas .
We have our plastering sand, the sharp sand, we have our compost, we have our top soil here,
and then we have nothing. So I'm going to seed this out now.
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tips and tricks on bringing your lawn to the next level - so let's get on with it !
So usually we take the drag mat and we drag the sand in. I'm not going to do that today
because I don't want to mix the compost in with the sand, so I'm just going to stand
this in and then give it a light rake off and hopefully that'll be us ready for the fertilizer.
So we have some fleece that we're going to cover
this with so this is quite a heavy fleece because we're getting a bit later on in the year.
So the plan is we're going to cover half, or we're going to put one strip that's
the whole way down, and then we're going to see how well this affects the seed germinating .
This is now day seven, we did this last week, this time last week - so let's have a look and see.
Sand. Nothing coming out of the sand. Compost. Some grass starting to show,
very very little grass starting to show the compost, Nothing out of the sand. Top soil?
Starting to get some grass out of the top soil.
This bit here has got nothing.
There's the sand, there's the compost, top soil , nothing added.
Another exhilarating, beautiful autumn day!
And here's the Magic Patch.
The bed that's doing the worst is the soil that wasn't covered at all, and as we pan across
this side was, wasn't covered. That side was. this one's definitely further ahead.
So now the lawn is nearly more or less grown in.
I'm going to say that now there's no real difference between the bit that we're covered
and the bit that we didn't cover. There's no, you can't really tell any difference. A cone
is one mark and a cone down at the bottom of the other mark, so from here over from here to here,
that bit was covered and then this bit wasn't covered. We have our sand here, this line here
this is our sand. This line here is the compost and this was our premium topsoil.
Whenever we come down to the soil, it's a slightly different story. There's definitely more grass in
the area that was covered with the the fleece, and uncovered we found that there was a lot of birds
pecking at the uncovered bit, so the top dressing protected the seeds a lot from the birds.
The weed grasses are starting already.
There we go, I'm like a proud father. The lawn is now cut, that's the first cut on it.
Lovely and green the whole way across. Perfect. If that was your lawn I'll be ......
that'd be an amazing lawn. So you can see down here that the only poorly bit is this uncovered area.
The rest is mint. Look at that. Perfect. If that was your lawn you'd be really happy with that!
Okay final thoughts. The areas that were covered with the compost and the topsoil clearly did the
best. The topsoil got off to a good start. Of the best start between the compost and the top soil,
after two or three weeks you couldn't tell the difference. If I was going to use topsoil
or compost, I would encourage you to use topsoil because it's not going to sink as much as compost.
Now this sanded bit, it took a lot longer to get going, you've clearly seen it in the video
that area is still quite weak. Now something else I'd like to talk about is the covering.
The grass that was under the covering got off to a really good start
but after three weeks the rest of the grass caught up with it. The area that we didn't cover, it didn't
do that well at all and you can clearly see from the birds pecking and everything else
It's been a very interesting experiment. If you have any questions
make sure to leave me a Comment down below.
Thank you for watching.