MONDAY, JUNE 05, 2006

Hydroseeding

Time was, planting grass over a large area was a tedious chore of spreading fertilizer, then seed, then raking it all in, then watering it all daily. No more. Now a truck backs up to your house and blasts water, seed, and fertilizer out of a firehose. Plus, the fertilizer acts like a glue to keep the seed in place, a definite bonus in an area prone to heavy rain like Lancaster.

So applying the seed wasn’t the problem; finding someone to do it was. During the dead of winter, with snow covering everything, we weren’t thinking about seeding, but apparenly everyone else was, so by the time we started calling around, everyone was booked until July! Since we thought a giant mud-pit was not a good backdrop to our grand opening, we couldn’t wait that long.

One day the tree guys were on the farm (their third visit this year, since there was so much dead wood on the trees overhanging our brand new roofs) and Dawn happened to mention she couldn’t find anyone to do the seeding. “Uh, we do that,” was the response, and they squeezed us into their schedule at the end of May. Two weeks later, we have baby grass everywhere.

I know we’ll regret this as soon as it’s tall enough to mow…