Ways to Protect Grass Seed

Hi this is Yolanda Vanveen and in this segment we're going to talk about ways to protect grass seed. So we lay out our compost and our grass seed and all of a sudden we see that it is a feast for the birds, we feel like we're in an Alfred Hitchcock movie because there's just birds everywhere and they're eating all of the seed that you spent the time to lay out. So there's a few things that you can do to try and protect your seed. And first of all, my rule of thumb is always plant three times the recommended amount of seed, so over seed, over seed, over seed. So if the birds get some, so what, they're still going to grow. And if it's still a problem you can get thin netting and just put netting over your grass and then that way the birds can land or put the netting just up a little bit, but they won't get into the grass seed and that helps a lot. And you can always put decoys out. There's lots of other ways that you can try to ward off the birds too. You can put an automatic sprinkler out too so if the birds come then the sprinkler will go off. But in the end, it's really hard to protect your seeds because usually some of the birds will get them. And like I said, always plant three times the amount of the seed, water it well. By using the hose and just spraying the birds every time they come near the area, a lot of times they'll just realize that this isn't a welcome neighborhood and they won't hangout in your yard. It only takes a couple of weeks for the seed to grow, so if you can just do the little bit at a time you'll realize enough though there are birds in your seeds, they'll still grow very lush and you won't even notice that some of the seed is missing.