Seeding a New Lawn - Neat Trick

Has anybody else ever done this?

Last year, I repaired a large portion of my lawn after extensive excavation work was done on my property. A friend told me to brew a strong tea from 10 teabags and combine it in a five gallon bucket with grass seed and enough tap water to make it mushy. I filled the bucket up with this mixture and let it sit overnight in the garage. The next mooring I could see that some the seeds had already sprouted. I spread the seed by hand, breaking up the clumps of wet seed as I went. I over seeded this with a little dry seed and raked it over. I watered it faithfully. In less than a week I had grass growing!

According to my buddy, the tannic acid in the tea breaks down the hulls of the seed and allows the germination to begin at a faster rate. I was very surprised to see how well it actually worked. I was just wondering if this is common knowledge or am I onto something new here?

Reply to
Winston Smith
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What kind of tea did you use? I may give this a try.

Reply to
allegro

Just plain old tea like Lipton or Red Rose tea. Oh, I forgot to mention I used a "starter seed" also raked in some "starter fertilizer" along with it.

Reply to
Winston Smith

What's a starter seed?

Reply to
Steveo

Reply to
Winston Smith

pasture...

Reply to
G Henslee

I've never used the tea but I have soaked the seed to get it started. I did it at work with ~ 40# of athletic turf seed. Soaked it and left it in the sack, draining, at the end of a work day to get started the next morning. Supervisor took me off that task to do something else. Returned to the task the next day and the seed was uselessly entangled with roots. Once nature gets going there's no stopping it.

-- Tom

Reply to
- Tom -

Reply to
Winston Smith

I was suspecting that any liquid, nontoxic, of course, would get germination going. But as Tom points out, it needs to be planted once it starts to sprout!

Reply to
Suzy O

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