Why Should You Choose Hydroseeding Over Broadcast Seeding Or Sodding?

By Harold Wood


You might have the most impressive looking house in the neighborhood, but if your lawn is overgrown, patchy, or discolored, it will make the whole place look like an eyesore. Mowing and edging are helpful, but that doesn't address the issue of the grass's color and texture. If you want a truly lush lawn, you have some options. You can put down broadcast seed, install sod, or opt for hydroseeding, which is also called hydromulching. Hydromulching has advantages you should consider.

You might be interested to know that hydromulching is used to regrow wilderness vegetation after a fire and will regrow riparian vegetation. Hydromulch is actually a slurry of seed and mulch that is transported by tanks or trailers and sprayed over ground that has been prepared for it. Hydromulching is used for erosion control by construction crews. It is extremely effective for homes with sloping lawns and hillsides.

Dry seeds are traditionally spread and then covered with an overlay of straw, ostensibly to keep the seeds in place and to discourage birds. Unfortunately the weather doesn't always cooperate, and a good wind will send the straw, and the seeds, sailing. Hydromulching on the other hand has a tackifier that acts as a sort of glue holding the slurry in place.

Broadcast seeding can evaporate. Grass must have moisture to grow. There is moisture in slurry. Hydromulch also has a coating to protect seeds from evaporation. Straw doesn't have the same capability. Straw can also drain nitrogen out of soil. It encourages weeds to grow up along the seedlings. There are wood fibers in hydromulch that add to the organic humus composition making the under layer of a lawn much stronger.

Hydromulching has obvious advantages over sod. Sodding a yard can be up to four times more expensive than hydromulching. Sod certainly looks great, but hydromulching can compete with it in the looks department and save your pocketbook at the same time. If sod isn't compatible with your soils, it won't take. The soil will reject it. Hydromulch can be mixed to complement your soil, making rejection much less likely.

The roots are cut off before sod is laid. This contributes to the chance that soil will reject the sod. Even if it takes, the result may not be healthy. Seeds are germinated with hydromulch. They take root in the soil while the blades shoot up. The result is a much hardier and healthier lawn than one on which sod was laid.

Hydromulching is significantly less expensive than sodding, but is more expensive than broadcast seed. When you factor in time, aggravation, and energy, as well as the cost of straw mulch and fertilizer the cost of hydromulching is much more competitive. Hydromulch also inhibits erosion.

Creating a beautiful lawn can be expensive and time consuming. For this reason you want to choose the most cost effective product that will produce the results you expect. If you comparison shop, you'll see that hydromulching is the way to go.




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