When do you seed?

[Stonehenge]

We try to only seed in the month of May, and from 8/15 - 9/15 each season (except for little touchups here and there).

I always get guff from the clients who call June 12th and I tell them they have to wait until August. They even sound like little kids sometimes (Joe down the street just has his lawn seeded. Why can't we have ours seeded now?)

Does anyone else try to chorale their clients into prime seeding times? If so, when are your prime times?

[Slimber]

:cowboy:

Out here in the Valley, we have about a month and a half (Oct-first half on Nov.) window frame to overseed warm seasoned turf (mostly Bermuda) before it gets to cold for the winter grass seeds to germinate. Some maint. companies keeps the warm season turf green till they are ready to overseed then they scalp and overseed.

[dan deutekom]

Up here the prime time to seed is late spring or about 1 week ago. That being said I will seed just about any time if I can be assured that they will be kept moist

[Stonehenge]

We won't do it, because we usually cannot count on the clients keeping the lawn moist.

This pic does not do this lawn justice - it is much worse than it appearsa. It was seeded mid-June, and clients in the area wanted theirs done then, too. Now they are thanking me for making them wait.

[Stonehenge]

I forgot - we'll seed very late in the year as well, and tell them not to water until Spring.

[Paul]

We seed any time except 1st October- November 10th. Then we really push our wild flower and praire seeding.

[Stonehenge]

Do you approach that seeding the same way you approach turf seeding?

[Paul]

Wild flowers and praire seeding, because we do stuff that requires us to follow IDOT rules most times are seeded with a special drill, Truax the one we own has three seed boxes and runs about $11K. Some of that seed runs over $300 per pound but we must be politcaly correct :)

We do shoot some thru our hydroseeder but mostly on very steep slopes with heavy mulches 3500 to 4500 lbs per acre. we have one going on this fall thats running $14K per acre.

Big money for planting weeds......................

[site]

I give the speech to customers over and over about when it's best to seed. Some listen, some don't. We did a good sized job at a new VW dealership this spring. They kept delaying the job, then finally gave it to us about June 10th. We seeded about June 20th. It came out poorly like most late June seed jobs. I wonder how many people drive by each day and blame me for the horrible lawn.

[RyanVT2005]

Cool Season grasses(Kentucky blue, fescues, bentgrass)...which most of you guys in the north should be using should be seeding in the fall. Seeding in the fall allows for germination followed by good root development before the ground freezes

[Stonehenge]

Ryan, when you worked for Brickman, did you get an opportunity to seed many lawns? I'm interested to know how they handled this.

[RyanVT2005]

I personally never got to do any turf installation while I worked with them, but I do know that they used sod as often as they could.

[Dale Wiley]

We do a lot of verticut seeding and renovations. We generally will seed just about any time the soil allows, excepting between about Nov 4 and Feb 20.

You can put seed in the profile and as long as its drained and not in standing water, the seed will wait until the soil reaches about 55 degrees to start germinating. The latest I like to seed or hydro seed here is that Nov 4 date. The seed comes in, but does not thrive until spring. We did one the 18th of Nov, it came in and grew, but that's late.

We slice seeded a base ball infield last week. They start playing in Feb, and its hard to get on the field for major work after that. We have done this to this field for 3 yers now and its starting to toughen up quite a bit.

Most all of our clients have sprinkler systems or access to water. We get very little rain from June to Oct. We like to start fall over seeding's ( slice seed with Ryan mataway) in early September, when we have soil temps in the 70 to 80 degree range. We get germination in 5 days, and sod quality in 3 to 4 weeks in established or sprayed out sod.

[jwholden]

I'll sod as late as they are cutting, we finished this job yesterday before the monsoon today!

[Robert T]

This year I seeded right thru the summer I used alittle more straw cover to keep the sun from drying the dirt out so fast! I only had 2 that I wans't happy with...
I stopped seeding on October 20th if I knew that it was going to be 63degrees in November I may have went another week!