A couple months ago I decided to plant some new grass in a couple areas around the house. I was considering buying some ecolawn, which I read about on the internet. It claimed to be a really environmentally friendly grass, in that it required very little mowing and watering. This sounded ideal to me. I ordered a 5 lb. bag for $30 (+ $15 for shipping & handling), then waited. And waited. After 12 days, I decided to contact them. I e-mailed them, and they replied promptly saying, “the credit card information you gave was not valid.” I was underwhelmed by their customer service to say the least. I gave up on them and decided to simply buy some grass seed at Pell’s, one of the local hardware stores in town. They offer a variety of different seeds in bulk, including grass seed. I got 2 pounds of “shady turf”, which was a blend with primarily fescue, which is what the ecolawn claimed to be. I also got 5 lbs of their general mixture. The shady turf was about $3 pound, and the normal blend was about $2 per pound, for a total of about $16, much less than what I would have paid for the ecolawn. I put the shady turf around the deck, where I had cleared out a bunch of brush. I ended up running out of it and switched to the general mix. I also planted some in some bare spots elsewhere in the yard, and ended up buying more seed a couple times before the end of the season.
I have planted grass elsewhere, and it seems that anywhere from 25%-50% success rate per seed is not bad, but I would have to say that I got more like 75% here. This ground is really fertile! It probably isn’t that impressive in the grand scheme of things, but it makes me happy.