What's The Best Grass Seed For Your Yard?

For episode 12 of #AskNorth40, we were asked, what is the best grass seed for the region? While there is a general answer, depending on the situation or your lawn, you may need to adjust to a different seed for your situation.

This is what is considered the best lawn grass seed for the northwest region. It is a cool season grass, meaning it does its best growing during the fall, winter and spring months when there are cooler temperatures. While it does well during the cooler months, it does not have a great tolerance to hot temperatures, which is why it requires more upkeep during the summer months.

When properly maintained, Kentucky Bluegrass will give you an excellent lawn that's soft, a nice dark green and will last longer. However, this seed requires a bit more maintenance than others and while it is a self-repairing turf, it will become susceptible to disease and weed invasion if not provided with the water and soil nutrients it needs.

Seed Mixes

When it comes to planting a pasture grass, or if you simply don't want to go through the extra effort to maintain Kentucky Blue Grass, you should look into seed mixes. These seed mixes vary, but these mixes will help the lawn become drought resistant (requiring less water) while providing a consistent ground coverage. The down side is that you will be sacrificing your lawn's softness which may or may not be acceptable depending on the lawn you are trying to create.

Seed mix variations have certain perks that can provide a nice grass that suits your needs and wants. Of course, you need to be aware of how each mix grows and its tolerance levels to certain things like shade and heat.

Common Types of Seed Mixes:

Perennial rye: This type of seed mix features another cool season grass, but is paired with a high wear and traffic tolerance. It prefers the sun, but can do well with the shade. Because it germinates quickly, it helps suppress weeds, which is why it is used for repairing Kentucky Bluegrass when infected. However, it has a bit of a low tolerance to heat.

Orchard grass: Orchard grass is a cool season, perennial, bunchgrass and is one of the earliest grasses to initiate growth in the spring and makes tremendous growth during cool conditions. It not only grows well under full sunlight, it also has a high tolerance to shade, drought and heat. Plus, it is one of the best forage grasses to use in the Northern states under intensive rotational grazing systems.

Fescues: Fescue grasses are shade tolerant and perform well in the lower areas of the transition zone between Canada and the US where the season is too hot for the other cool grasses and in the area of the transition zone that is too cold in the winter for the warm season grasses. Fescue grasses possess the ability to stay green all year long, as they require less water and fertilizer due to their deep root system. The trade-off for the low maintenance is that this grass is moderately course textured turf, opposite of the other grass seeds.

Regardless of the type of grass you grow, there is still an amount of maintenance that needs to be put in for your grass to stay healthy and not get patchy or weedy. If you're looking for more information on keeping your lawn healthy, check out the Lawn & Garden Edition of our eMag.