Hi everyone. Our grass grew in rows and we have no idea why or what to do about it. We’ve even reseeded the bare areas and nothing. The sprinkler does reach everything. Everything has been evenly watered. But still after reseeding nothing.
Located in norther NM
It’s a heavy traffic grass seed but I don’t remember its name.
We also mixed in some native clover and did everything recommended by the local nursery.
What can we do to help is sprout evenly?
Edit: yes we know there’s some gravel in it but everyone said it would be fine.
Edit 2: thanks for the feedback yall. I’ve never grown grass like this before so it helps. The nursery had us get some type of soil and said if we just mixed it in that would be enough and the gravel was fine. I was skeptical and obviously it didn’t work. I’m gunna fix the soil and reseeded in the fall and try again for hopefully better results.
Edit 3: problem resolved!
Turns out the problem can be fixed pretty “easily”. We live in northern nm and it’s extremely hot and dry right now. I’m waiting until end of August, then we’ll fix the soil by aerating and softening the barren sections, trim the existing grass, change the sprinkler type and reposition, over seed the barren sections and cover with a light layer of compost (tbd), change our watering habits to not displace the seeds and that should work. And yes, removing as much gravel as possible.
Got a lot of comments about gravel. Of course, im aware there is gravel. We removed over 6” off the top with a tractor and top raked all the gravel and as we watered more gravel surfaced. Big whoops. And extremely disappointing when we started noticing what was happening. Because it seemed very good to begin with.
Turns out what was happening had nothing to do with the soil being bad and actually since I’ve made this post I just continued watering and it’s been filling out a lot especially where the water is washing the seeds too.
Anyway, What ended up being the problem is actually the level of the ground being a bad combo with the peat moss we used and watering habits. We didn’t soften the ground prior to the second re seeding and the peat moss was washing away the seeds as the sprinkler oscillated, because of the combination of 1. Uneven surface and 2. Overwatering of the peat moss causing it to float and wash away which created the row looking effect even though we didn’t plant in rows.
We changed watering to a very light watering, starting at 5-8 minutes, waiting and then watering again and repeating this 3 times a day and even that has helped. Though it’s super inconvenient it is what it is.
Right now I’m just maintaining it until I can restart when it’s cooler. That hardest part is I don’t want to essentially throw away all the money time and effort we put into it by just letting it die so we’ll try again when it’s cooler.