If you’re like most homeowners, you take pride in your lawn. After all, a well-manicured lawn can make your home look more attractive and inviting. But what if your lawn is patchy? If you have bare spots or patches of dead grass, it can make your entire home look neglected.
However, if you’re looking to take your lawn from drab to fab, hydroseed is the way to go.
Hydroseed is a type of grass seed that is mixed with water and then sprayed over the lawn. It germinates quickly and evenly, resulting in a luscious, green lawn. As a result, hydroseed is an ideal solution for patchy lawns.
But what exactly is in hydroseed mixtures?
Hydroseed is a mixture of water, seed, fertilizer, and mulch sprayed onto the ground with a hose. Hydroseeding is an excellent alternative to traditional methods such as broadcasting, top dressing, or sod. It offers many other benefits that can make your lawn look fantastic.
Keep reading to learn 5 great reasons to hydroseed your landscape!
1. Less Expensive Than Traditional Seed Methods
Less Labor-Intensive
For anyone who has ever seeded a lawn, hydroseed is a revelation. Rather than laboriously spreading seed by hand, hydroseeding involves mixing seed with water and fertilizer and then spraying the mixture onto the ground. The hydroseed mix adheres to the soil, providing excellent coverage and preventing the seed from being blown away or eaten by birds.
Hydroseeding is less labor-intensive than other grass-seeding methods, such as broadcasting, top dressing, and sod installation. Hydroseeding can be completed in a shorter time frame, which reduces the overall cost of the project.
Hydroseeding Vs. Broadcasting
Hydroseeding Vs. Top Dressing
Top dressing involves spreading a thin layer of seeds mixed with organic material or other soil amendments onto your lawn. The idea is to improve your existing grass and promote new seed growth.
Much like broadcasting, this method involves working by hand or using a mechanical spreader. It can also be challenging to achieve an even distribution. Needless to say, top dressing can be quite labor-intensive.
On the other hand, the hydroseed mix is sprayed on the lawn with a hose, and the water pressure helps to distribute the seed evenly
Hydroseeding Vs. Sod
Sod is grass with a small amount of soil and roots underneath. You often see it transported in rolls before final installation. The biggest appeal of sod is that once it is installed, it looks like a fully grown lawn.
However, it will also put a significant dent in your wallet. In fact, sod typically costs 50 to 80 percent more than hydroseeding.
Unlike sod, hydroseeding does not require any special training to install. Simply mix the hydroseed slurry and apply it to the desired area. The hydroseed will then take root and begin to grow.
Sod, on the other hand, must be installed by hand, which can be a time-consuming and difficult process. Sod must also be carefully watered and monitored to prevent it from drying out or freezing.
2. A More Efficient Way To Plant Seeds
Hydroseeding is more efficient than traditional seed planting because it allows for greater control over the hydration process, ensuring that the seeds are properly hydrated and able to germinate.
Since hydroseeding involves spraying a mixture of water, seed, mulch, and fertilizer from a hose, it can be used to plant large areas quickly and without heavy machinery. If you’ve ever watered a lawn, you can easily apply hydroseed.
Grows Faster Than Traditional Seeding Methods
Hydroseed helps establish grass growth more quickly than other seeding methods because of the increased contact between the hydroseed mixture and the soil. In fact, hydroseed typically takes only 5-7 days to sprout.
Protects Seeds From Animals
Hydroseed also helps to protect the seeds from birds and other animals that might otherwise eat them. This means hydroseed requires fewer touch-ups for bare spots on your lawn down the line. Even if your lawn does require a touch-up, it will be a simple matter of mixing up a little more hydroseed and spraying it wherever there is a bald patch.
For these reasons, hydroseeding is a more efficient and effective method for planting seeds and establishing new grass growth.
3. Hydroseed Provides A Uniform Coverage Of Seeds
Even And Accurate Coverage
Seeds distributed via a seed spreader or by hand will sometimes land in areas where they are unable to germinate, or worse, sit on top of the soil and get picked off by birds. Not only does this make your yard less appealing it also means more work for you since the bare spots will need to be reseeded at a later time.
Contrast that with hydroseed, which ensures that seeds are evenly distributed across the entire area to be seeded. Hydroseed also uses a special holding agent that makes the mixture tacky and able to adhere to the ground. This tackiness not only prevents the seeds from blowing away, but also makes it more difficult for birds and other animals to consume the seeds.
For this reason, hydroseed results in a more uniform stand of grass or other vegetation.
Easy To Apply To Difficult-To-Access Or Large Areas
The hydroseeding process is also ideal for areas that are difficult to access or too large to seed by hand. As you can imagine, using a seed spreader on a steep hill or even a slight slope makes it nearly impossible to get a uniform distribution of seeds. Since hydroseed is pre-mixed with water and fertilizer, it will adhere to a hill or slope and keep seeds in place so they can take root and grow.
Not to mention that seeding a large area by hand or via a mechanical seed spreader can be daunting, especially in the heat of the day. Just ask yourself: Would you rather push a seed spreader around for several hours on a hot day, or would you rather quickly spray a mixture from a hose?
For these reasons, hydroseeded lawns typically have a more even distribution of grasses and other plants.
4. Hydroseed Helps To Prevent Erosion
Holding Agent In Hydroseed Mixture Adheres Seed To Soil
The hydroseeder mixes the seed with water and a specialized holding agent that helps the seed to adhere to the soil. This process is often used on slopes or other areas where erosion is a concern. Hydroseed is often used on hills because the hydroseeding process creates a protective layer that helps to hold the seed in place and prevent wash-away.
In fact, hydroseed is often used to prevent erosion on construction sites. The hydroseed mix will bind together and create a temporary soil-like substance that will hold the ground in place until grass can grow.
Water In Hydroseed Mixture Aids Germination And Keeps Soil Moist
Since the hydroseeding mixture includes water, hydroseeding also helps to keep seeds moist so that the seeds can germinate more quickly. The hydroseeding mixture also helps keep the soil moist, which prevents soil from blowing away in the wind. This is how hydroseed helps to prevent erosion and retain moisture in the soil.
For all these reasons, hydroseed is the ideal seeding method if you are concerned about erosion in your lawn.
5. Hydroseed Is Easier To Control Than Traditional Seed Methods
Spraying Allows For Better Control
Hydroseeding is easier to control than traditional seed methods and produces better results. After all, it’s simply a matter of pointing the spray nozzle exactly where you want the grass to grow!
With hydroseeding, you can precisely control the amount of seed that’s applied to your lawn. This ensures that your lawn gets the right amount of seed, resulting in a fuller, healthier lawn.
Easy To Customize Your Seed Mix
Helps Control Weeds
Nothing’s more frustrating than seeding your lawn with grass and then seeing weeds emerge instead a couple of weeks later. While learning how to install a weed barrier can help mitigate this issue in your landscaping, grass often competes with weeds if the grass is not well seeded.
Fortunately, hydroseed can help prevent this issue. Weeds can take over your lawn for several reasons:
- Birds or animals ate the grass seeds
- The wind blew the grass seeds away
- Rain washed the seeds away
- Lack of grass growth allowed weeds to become established
Here’s how hydroseed helps to minimize each of these problems:
- Since the hydroseed mixture binds the seeds to the soil, it is less likely that birds or other animals will eat the seeds.
- Similarly, since the hydroseed mixture is tacky, it makes it nearly impossible for the wind to blow it away.
- Rain is usually a friend of grass, but if you have dry seeds sitting on your lawn, you can be sure that many of your newly laid seeds will end up in the gutter. The hydroseed includes a tackifier that prevents washout, even from heavy rain.
- Traditional seeding methods lose a certain percentage of seeds to birds and animals, wind, and rain. Traditional methods allow other plants (namely weeds) to establish themselves on your lawn. However, since hydroseed provides a moist environment for seeds to germinate, it allows the grass to grow before the weeds. Weeds need sunlight and oxygen to grow, so by creating a dense canopy of grass, hydroseed prevents them from getting the resources they need to survive. As a result, hydroseed is an effective way to control weeds without using harmful chemicals.
Contact Farrell’s Lawn And Garden
If you are looking for a more efficient and environmentally friendly way to seed your property, hydroseeding is the way to go! Contact us today to learn more about this innovative process and how it can benefit you.