Rewilding My Lot

Previous posts: Planning, Preparation

Finally in May 2023 it was time to seed my native grasses. The ground was as weed-free as I could get it and the ground was softened with recent rain.

Thunder Turf is a mixture of Buffalograss, Blue Grama and Curly Mesquite. You can buy the seed as a mixture, but I chose to buy the three seeds separately and mix them myself. (That yielded me some extra Buffalograss seed to use for other projects later.)

This was the process I used:

• The seeding area was watered the night before.
• The area was divided into four equal pieces. (I didn’t trust myself to be able to seed everywhere evenly in one go.)
• I divided the seeds into four equal portions by weight.
• Grass seeds on their own would be hard to disperse evenly, so for each of the four portions I mixed a bucket of half compost and half soil, then mixed the seeds in.

• Dispersion was fairly easy to do evenly because the ground was sandy colored and the soil/seed mix I was adding was dark brown. I scattered the seeds by hand.
• After the seeds were down, I gave the whole area a good stomping. Grass seeds don’t like to be buried, but good contact with the soil helps with germination and to prevent them being blown around.

• Then the area was lightly watered to moisten the seeds but not move them around, and I continued with daily light waterings after that. The plan was to water daily until I could see germination (estimated 2-3 weeks), then drop down to waterings once or twice a week to encourage deep root growth.
• I didn’t walk on the seeded area, or pull any new weeds, so as not to hinder germination.

I missed an opportunity to take a few samples of each kind of seed to plant in labelled pots, so that I could identify plants in the ground later. I regret not doing that.

This was my first seeding project, but it seemed to go well. However, the next chapter in this story tells how a torrential rain downpour ruined most of this crop.