Grass seed - WTF?!!

[janmoomoo]

My lawn is quite patchy from the dog and kids. Every year I rope it off, sprinkle grass seed on the bare patches, put out bird scarers, water it and then watch it just sit there, week after week. It never does anything!

Am I too early (mid-May), too late, wrong sort of seed, or is there a top tip I am missing?

marking my place as we are the same and not a clue..

I had this problem and scraped the bare area with a rake, then sowed the grass seed, watered in well, then covered in a clear polythene sheet with fork holes in it. Left it there for 2 weeks and there was lovely grass growing underneath.

Worth a try?

I think that the best time to sow grass was in the spring or autumn. But grass grows all summer, so it should grow now.

Is the ground too dry? Or could those pesky birds be eating all of your seeds?

Birds arent eating it as it is still just sitting there, staring back at me, looking seed-ish!!

Polythene sheet sounds successful, but mine is lots of little bare patches so not sure how I would do that, but might try it with a few of the bigger patches.

How compact is the soil in those patches? If it is very hard, it might need a bit of aerating so that it is more crumbly?

You've got to rake it quite hard to break up the surface of the soil, you should be sweating a little bit if it's a large area, then water it before you sow. The areas will look really quite bad after the raking but will bounce back. Very lightly rake the seeds in. You will also have to water if it is dry weather i.e. now. I did it and it worked fine apart from the driest patches - indicating that keeping up with the watering will pay dividends. Don't cut it until it is about 8 cm tall. Avoid walking on the patches. Spring is the best time but you can still get away with it now if you avoid mowing the re-sown patches and keep watering. HTH

OK, so looks like I need to do some serious raking. I have just been sort of scattering it. Will try that now, thanks.

"Birds arent eating it as it is still just sitting there, staring back at me, looking seed-ish!!"

That made me choke on my cornflakes!
I'll be trying these tips as my grass is looking very patchy too.