put down seed , now what ?

Hi all just sowed a whole area with grass seed 120sq/m to be exact, and just wondering what i need to do throughout the next months and into spring to give me a cracking lawn ready for next summer....... many thanks

 

You don't say where you are but if you've had the rain we've had then I don't think you'll need to be doing any watering for a while

 

Thanks, should i give it any feed when it appears?

 

yeah i put down a pre lawn feed, so will leave it till spring now. thanks

 

Keep the leaves off it. Try not to walk on it (put a plank down to stand on if you have to walk / work on it). If your weather has been anything like East Anglia it will be wet enough, and "hot days" are pretty unlikely from now on.

In the Spring feed it and then follow that with a selective weed-killer if there are weeds in the lawn (the grass will be young and not well able to compete, but having said that the weeds won't grow now, which is the advantage of Autumn sowing, so the grass will have a head start by spring). Check the packet and make sure the selective weed-killer is suitable for a new lawn (generally after 6 months any lawn chemical is fine, but younger than that you may need to be careful). Also be careful what you do with the lawn clipping after treating it with selective weed-killer - current formulations of Verdone remain in the grass clippings for up to 18 months I think, so they cannot be used in compost heap or as a mulch for rather a long time! and I don;t think you are supposed to put them in your Brown Bin either)

I like to roll grass seedlings when they are quite small - it encourages them to "tiller"

 

Thanks for the advice kristen, regarding the leaves how fussy should i be about clearing the them cause i have alot of trees around me which drop there leaves, i could be out every day?

 

Problem with leaves, particularly big ones, is that they stop the grass from seeing the light. And when they get thoroughly wet through they stick to the ground. So as long as you get them off the grass before they have been hanging around so long that they are cutting out the light you should be OK.

Worms will also try to haul the (smaller) leaves into their casts, which is also not so good.

If the leaves are dry, and still blowing into next door neighbours garden, they are not doing any harm. But when they start to clag-up you need to pick them up; doing them once a week is probably plenty often enough. If the quantity will be huge, if you were to only do them once a week, then it would make the job more manageable to clear them up a bit more often.

Either way I wouldn't fret about it too much - my approach is to consider that it is cheaper than going to the gym!

 

Thanks kristen, :thumb: