Rewilding My Lot

Last month I reseeded about a quarter of my original short native grass area, to fill in gaps. The seed I am using is Thunder Turf, which is a mixture of three short native grasses.

Now I have reseeded about another quarter of the area, along the left side fence. This is where I have had standing water after heavy rain in the past. I don’t know yet how much digging the swale will help with that, and also to raise the grass area a little, that’s where I put quite a bit of the soil that came out of the swale. The next heavy rain will show me where water wants to move now, but I’m hoping to get this seed germinated in the meantime.

This is a photo of the area before seeding; it’s the 6-ft strip next to the fence. The green tufts are the grasses that grew from the original seeding.

I spread the seed as per my usual protocol — mix with soil, scatter, then scatter more soil. The ground was already soft and damp so I didn’t water.

The last grass area to be reseeded is on the right side. However, I don’t want to proceed with that until next-door the builder has stopped the liberal use of sprinklers that causes standing water every morning. That is a newly built house, with turf being established, and no occupant yet. So until the daily flooding stops, there seems no point in putting seed down.