Pre chitted lawn seed?

[Kath123]

I work in a school and our grassed area has many bare patches. I have read than you can either buy or make your own pre chitted grass seed. It would be cheaper to make (if that's what you would say) so can anyone advise me how to do this. If i do the conventional way it means that we have to keep the children of the grass - which is impossible as you can imagain. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Thermo]

makes no difference what seed you put down, until it has established you will need to keep foot traffic off of it.

 

[dextrous]

astroturf! They have used this at my daughters primary school (admittedly is has a lot of trees keeping the areas under shade which means that grass would struggle anyway). Looks good and prevents muddy feet!

 

[HERTS P&D]

Re-seed the area over the summer holidays at least you will have 6 weeks for the grass to grow.

Don't forget to water.

Andy

 

[Kath123]

Thanks for replies. We have already reseeded last autumn but still have a few patches. Just thought if I could pre chit grass it would come quicker and the children would be able to watch it and monitor it. Unfortunately we are only a small village school and funds are very low so we cannot afford astro turf. Oh well back to the old fashioned way i suppose.

 

[dextrous]

Nothing to stop you making an area to grow your own turf strips.

 

[Thermo]

if you go fo something like an ammenity turf it will be cheap and very hard wearing.

 

[roberta1000]

The only real advantage to pre-chitting the seed is that it deters the birds. I did it once when I seeded a new lawn - bag of damp, sharp sand mixed with grass seed, wait a week or so, broadcast as normal. Worked OK in that there was less bird nuisance but it would still need a few months to tolerate foot traffic (especially schoolkids!).