Organic Soil Solutions is an all organic lawn care company
based in Woburn, MA and serving the Boston area to Route 495.

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Lawns in Progress

Here are a few pictures of dormant seeding in my backyard. This area gets trampled by kids playing, hanging around the picnic table and running to the tree house in the Norway maple. This grass has held up well over the past couple of years and I apply the dormant seed each winter to thicken and rejuvenate it. It is a bit of a gamble, but so easy it’s worth it. I just wait until a good snow storm is on the way.

I prefer one of those gray days when the ground is frozen and you can almost smell the snow coming. I spread the appropriate or left over grass seed on the frozen ground and go inside to warm up and watch the snow fall. Assuming the snow stays for a while, or perhaps all winter, you will not see the seed when it melts. It has worked its way into the soil, due to the freezing and thawing and melting, and will ready to germinate in the spring when it warms up.

The best time to seed is late summer or early fall, but this is a fun way to apply seed to areas that get a lot of traffic or to thicken up any lawn. With the right weather, it works great. If we have a warm spell and the seed germinates before a subsequent freeze, it doesn’t work so well. Seeds that germinate quickly, such as perennial rye have a tougher time. Research shows that February is the best time for dormant seeding and that grass plants from dormant seeds have more stored energy, more complete root systems and are better able to handle the rigors of summer than those planted in the spring.

Grubs Experiment

Here is a little experiment I tried in the spring of 2006. I had heard that grubs don't like compost. I placed some compost in one side of a container and some soil, I thought grubs might like, in the other. I put 20 grubs in the compost side and removed the divider. Two days later there were 18 grubs in the soil side.

These results led me to believe that the beetles, laying the eggs that become grubs, would prefer not to lay their eggs in fresh compost. I had 5 customers with recurring grub problems. I felt that soil type may be a factor in why the beetles choose these sites year after year. In July, when the beetles were swarming, we top dressed these areas with compost. We had no grub damage in these lawns. In the spirit of full disclosure, I also applied some cedar granules, which repel insects to these areas.

Assuming it was the compost that repelled the insects, why? When I look on the web, most of the articles are about too many grubs in compost. I don't think they are the same species. The professional compost makers I spoke to don't have any grub problems in their piles. A scientist who works with grubs from Ohio State said that it is very possible that ammonium from the compost or the presence of nematodes and other micro biology may be a deterring factor. This spring we will try it again and monitor more closely. When I did it last year, I didn't know it would work!