Lawn care tips continued . . .
People often ask if they have to have their lawn hydro-seeded in order for it to be nice. The answer is no. Hydro-seed is not some kind of magic formula. It is nothing more than a fancy way to apply grass seed. A hyrdo-seeder is just a machine that mixes water, grass seed, fertilizer and mulch into a slurry that is sprayed onto your lawn. The ingredients are exactly the same that you would use if you seed by hand, with the exception of the mulch.
And contrary to popular belief, hydro mulch is no better than good old fashioned straw. In my opinion straw is a much, much better mulch. The primary advantage to hydro-seed is that the grass seed is thoroughly soaked before it is applied, which assures germination. That's a huge advantage if your seeding along a motorway where it is not practical to wet the seed after it has been applied.
With either method, your gardener dublin still have to water just as much once the seeding is done. Many people are lead to believe that hydro-seed doesn't have to be watered as much as hand seed. This is a huge misconception. If you fail to water hydro-seed once it is applied, it will still germinate and little tiny grass plants will appear. But just a few hours without water on a hot day, and those little tiny grass plants will wither and die. This is a big problem because once the seed has germinated, it is spent. All the water in the world will not make that spent seed produce another grass plant.
Hydro seed has its benefits, but for the residential lawn it's not all that important. Why do I claim that straw is a better mulch than hydro-mulch? Think about how the hydro-mulch is applied. It is mixed with the seed, fertilizer and water as a slurry, and sprayed on the lawn. The mulch has not been applied over top of the seed which is how mulch is supposed to be applied, it is all mixed together. Some of the seeds are under the mulch, and some of the seeds are on top of the mulch. Mulch can't do much good when the seeds are resting up on top of it. They might as well be sun bathing!
Now think about the process of hand seeding. The seed is spread on the soil, then you should take a push broom and drag it backwards over top of the seeded area. This applies a very thin layer of soil over most of the seeds. Then you spread the straw over top of the soil. The pieces of straw are scattered in all directions, with many of them crisscrossing each other.
Remember the movie, "Honey I shrunk the Kids"? The part where they are walking through the lawn and the blades of grass are huge compared to them? This is what it's like to be a grass seed under a mulch of straw. Those little tiny grass seeds are lost under the straw, and that's exactly what you want to protect them from the intense rays of the sun.
As the sun works its way across the sky the grass seeds actually receive filtered sunlight. Enough sun to warm the seeds so they grow, but also enough shade to protect the tender young grass plants. As the grass plants grow, they also raise the mulch with them to a degree, providing additional shade for the seeds that haven't germinated yet. The shade that straw mulch provides also helps to retain the moisture around the seeds. Grass seeds will never get this kind of protection from hydro mulch.
Another trait of hydro-seed is that as the slurry dries, it becomes a blanket over the lawn. In the event of a heavy rainfall, running water tends to get under this blanket and carry it away, leaving big areas with no seed at all. They make a glue that you can actually add to the hydro seed mix, but my experience has shown that the glue will hold the hydro seed in place a little longer, but when it does wash out much larger areas wash because they are glued together.
With hand seeding, each seed is independent, and they fall between the nicks and crannies of the soil. In the event of heavy rain, the running water must be severe enough to wash the soil away before the seeds can be moved. I've installed hundreds of lawns using both techniques, for the difference in cost I'll take the hand seeded lawn any day.
Lawn care tips 3