Atwood LawnCare

Every year, your lawn will send up shoots of grass seed, usually in late May or Early June. Will this seed help to make the lawn thicken up and save you the trouble of purchasing grass seed from the hardware store?

In a word, No.

The grass seed you see in your lawn is the natural part of a grass plant’s life cycle. There is nothing that can be done to prevent the seed-heads, and quite frankly we don’t want to prevent them as it is just a natural part of having healthy turfgrass.

Grass seed is grown predominantly in the Northwest on large seed farms in Oregon and Washington. These seed farms allow the grass plants to grow to a height of 2-3 feet tall for long periods of time. The seeds that are produced on these pants mature and develop over the course of the entire summer before being harvested and then packaged. Without this maturation time, the seeds would not become viable.

As you mow your lawn, your seed heads are cut off and fall to the ground where they will dry out and decompose. The plant may even send up a new seed-head to replace the one just cut off, depending on the timing of that first cut. But the seed will not germinate and grow a new grass plant because they do not have the chance to mature and develop.