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Grass seed for lawn in PNW
- Thread Starter bigbearbear
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Go to homedepot and get shade seed of nerve shaded areas and full sun for the sun areas and sun shade for the areas that get sun and shade.
Haven't seen rush "hour" yet have you? Not to mention on a game night.
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OP works from home, so he can drive to Seattle during low traffic times if he needs to go there. Also, the Sounder runs to Seattle from Auburn in 30 minutes.
When we moved here I forbade my wife from hiring a gardener because I actually want to cut my own lawn. I grew up in the Midwest and hate the idea of hiring people to do my household chores for me. The lawn is where I play catch with my kids, it is their terrain to run through and play on so I'd never replace it with rock or planters.
Good luck with your lawn.
When we moved here I forbade my wife from hiring a gardener because I actually want to cut my own lawn. I grew up in the Midwest and hate the idea of hiring people to do my household chores for me. The lawn is where I play catch with my kids, it is their terrain to run through and play on so I'd never replace it with rock or planters.
Good luck with your lawn.
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Seed grasses anytime soil temps are 55 or above, we are past those right now.
Best seed would be a perennial ryegrass mix. In a heavy shade area a turf type tall fescue would work pretty good too. After many years and tons of seeding perennial rye grasses, I would mix in some fescue with it, at least 30%. Rye grasses are heavy feeders and need fertilizer to stay looking good. About 4 to 5 times a year depending on how much you irrigate the grass. The fescue and rye grass have different textures and one does better where the other does not.
As for soil prep, you can kill off the weeds, and then rent a thatcher and scarify the top half inch of soil, lightly rake it out, seed and fertilize, rake and roll it, then apply a very thin layer of a fine grind compost to hold the moisture in the soil Keep it moist until the seeds germinate, probably about 5 to 7 days.
If you need to till the soil for whatever reason, it would not hurt to add a bit of sand since those soils tend to be high in clay and silts. Rake it out and do the same as above for seeding and cover layer. This is going to be a lot more work.
Depending on the size of the yard, you might want to consider sod for ease of installation and establishment.
I am seeding my new law today, a fescue bluegrass mix which works pretty good here on the high desert of Central Oregon. Cover with light mulch, rake it in.
Best seed would be a perennial ryegrass mix. In a heavy shade area a turf type tall fescue would work pretty good too. After many years and tons of seeding perennial rye grasses, I would mix in some fescue with it, at least 30%. Rye grasses are heavy feeders and need fertilizer to stay looking good. About 4 to 5 times a year depending on how much you irrigate the grass. The fescue and rye grass have different textures and one does better where the other does not.
As for soil prep, you can kill off the weeds, and then rent a thatcher and scarify the top half inch of soil, lightly rake it out, seed and fertilize, rake and roll it, then apply a very thin layer of a fine grind compost to hold the moisture in the soil Keep it moist until the seeds germinate, probably about 5 to 7 days.
If you need to till the soil for whatever reason, it would not hurt to add a bit of sand since those soils tend to be high in clay and silts. Rake it out and do the same as above for seeding and cover layer. This is going to be a lot more work.
Depending on the size of the yard, you might want to consider sod for ease of installation and establishment.
I am seeding my new law today, a fescue bluegrass mix which works pretty good here on the high desert of Central Oregon. Cover with light mulch, rake it in.
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Hah.....yes and thank you. I am a tech worker who works from home, been this way for many jobs and years. I never had a lawn so this will be a new hobby for me. Plus my home office overlooks the front lawn and I want to do the Clint Eastwood imitation and yell GET OFF MY LAWN with a M1A in hand.
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I accidentally murdered about 1/2 acre of my lawn, I reseeded with Kentucky 31 tall fescue from TSC. It's super thick and is supposed to be drought tolerant(I reseeded end of last summer, I'm yet to test that). It took off nicely on my crap hardened clay soil.
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Fescues are so much easier to deal with and have a much higher tolerance for poor soils and cultural practices. I spent years dealing with home lawns, commercial properties and then sports fields and gold courses. The breeders have bred the perennial rye grass varitey's that they have bred for color and looks and not so much wear or soil tolerance. I have installed and maintained acres of that grass and just have a lot of fertilizer on hand to hold the color and keep the fungus's away. The ryes are used on a lot of sports fields, but are not rhizomious in nature, meaning they do not spread from roots. One seed, one plant and if that is killed off, you have to reseed to get grass growing again.
I started mixing some fescues in my ryegrass sports fields and got them to have a little bit more wear tolerance. In my current lawn, I am using the fescues with a bit of bluegrass. I am after utility and wear tolerance and a lower water usage, along with a decent look, but after years of pimping out grass fields, I can handle a less intense approach.
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The neighbor on one side of my doesn't have a weed problem per se, but rather, they have what I call a "ivy situation". Their entire front and backyard is covered with a thick carpet of ivy of all sorts and they even climb up high into the trees they have.
Naturally those have cept across the fence to my side but I had sprayed selective herbicide on my lawn, hopefully it will kill those. I have also sprayed some highly concentrated non-selective Spectracide across the property in the front yard where we do not have a fence and it looks like those close to me are dying.
In the long run looks like I will be dealing with encroaching ivy more than weeds.
