About a week ago we seeded the "1/4" Nursery" as we call it. The prep consisted of killing off the native grass, mowing it down to 1" a couple directions and rototilling multiple directions incorporating our in house compost to amend the soil. After about 4 days of light and frequent irrigation cycles and warm sunny days, much of the seed popped. On the 4th of July we added a celebratory shot of 19-25-5 fertilizer to get things going. We will continue irrigating only to keep the soil moist, save a couple days a week to allow for a tidy roll. Hopefully by the end of the week it should be ready for another roll and then a mowing. As the roots begin to take hold, we will topdress it by hand to continue smoothing the surface and slowly scale back the irrigation. Our goal is to have it grown in by the end of the month, so we can harvest sod from it this fall. We have a quite a few new tees to build in the next year, so the sooner we can begin, the better.
As luck would have it, a few nights after we seeded, a sprinkler on the hill above the Nursery blew up and washed a nice portion of new seedlings out. We will reseed this area, along with the rest of the nursery at a lighter rate to fill in the voids. We erred a little on the light side with our seed rate, so lesson learned for next time when we have stripped sod off and have to start over.
