Barenbrug 700784 25 lb. Peren Ryegrass Seed

I have struggled for years to grow grass in the difficult clay soil of NC. The lawn I used this Perennial Rye Grass on is technically fescue, but bermuda has invaded over the years and by the end of the summer was a mess of burned out fescue, straggly bermuda and weeds. It is virtually impossible to kill bermuda, so my plan is to convert my lawn to full bermuda which may not look too bad when the native bermuda comes back. As a winter quick fix i thought i would try this rye grass before killing everything off in the spring. I had dethatched and cropped the lawn prior to putting down the seed. I think I used about 20 pounds of seed for a 3,000 square feet lawn, raked it in lightly to the dirt which had loosened a little during the dethatching, added starter fertilizer and watered 2 or 3 times per day. After 5 days I could see a lot of shoots already coming through and after about 10 days it had really shot up into a thick mass of green. I actually had to mow after 12 days and just did the second mowing this past weekend, three weeks after sowing and the lawn looks really nice. There is thick grass almost everywhere. Some of the bermuda-heavy sections are less so as the heat of the last few weeks has been favorable to that stuff too, but overall i already have a lawn that looks great. The color is not as dark as a good fescue, but it is not a yellowy like shade of green that i see with some annual rye grass. As i said, this is clay soil which gets a lot of sun and i just sowed over the existing (shaved down) fescu/bermuda/weeds. Perhaps I would have seen better results had i used Round-Up a couple of weeks prior to seeding, but what i now have looks really nice anyway. I suspect it will look even better as it matures and thickens more too. I do realise that come May or June the rye will die off in the heat, but as I am planning to convert to Bermuda I am not too concerned. On saying that if it looks strong in May I may just leave it and live with whatever is left for the months of July and August.

This seed is great for filling in bare spots and it germinates and sprouts rapidly.