Miraculous grass seed exists – but be sure you know what you are getting

A lot of people have been excitedly telling us about a new “miracle grass” they have heard of. It grows anywhere, they tell us, and needs a lot less water and mowing. However, lawn lovers need to remember the old adage that too-good-to-be-true often is just that.

 

The product is called Ecolawn, and it does fulfill those three promises. It will germinate in poor soil, needs very little water, and will obediently stop growing when it gets to about eight inches tall. If the only thing you want in a lawn is for it to be green so you can otherwise ignore it, it might be what you’re after. But in our opinion, if you want a really good looking lawn, you wont get it from Ecolawn.

 

Ecolawn is all fescue-type grass. The blades are very thin, lack the strong blue-green colour homeowners love, and tend to lie down and become matted as they grow longer. People who have used it have told us how disappointed they were. It did not look like they wanted a lawn to look, and they said it looked more like an unkempt field than an attractive playable surface for their kids. So we really advise against it. Especially because of the excellent new alternatives available.

 

The grass seed industry is huge. New varieties and species are bred all the time to be better looking, drought resistant, heat or cold resistant, and even to have a bad taste to grass-eating bugs. These are known as Certified seeds – patented by the companies that engineered them. Every year tens of thousands of new grass types are ranked on a scale called NTEP – the National Turfgrass Evaluation Protocol. When we choose our seed blend every year, we always pick types from the top ten in each category. Sure they cost us more, but we figure it is better than the headache’s we’d cause from picking weaker grass varieties.

 

This is such a big thing to us we’ll sell you our seed at the same per-kilogram price as the top seed you could buy from Canadian Tire, even though ours is so much better. The details on how and when to overseed are available here, along with information about our new Powerseeding service for lawns in need of serious repair.

 

As for Ecolawn – they’re selling seed we wouldn’t take for free, at a premium price.