There are three main families of grass seeds used for lawns in Canada. Rye Grass, Blue Grass and Fescue are good cool season grasses, and generally will go brown in the high heat of summer. These may be annual (meaning that they generally are meant to live for one year or so), or perennial (meaning that they are meant to come back year after year). Attributes can vary quite surprisingly within the various strains but of course the families have general characteristics that apply in most cases.
Rye Grass
This grass tends to be fast growing, with thinner blades, will grow almost anywhere. This grass tends to be cheaper and quite often is annual rather than perennial. This is used to make up the bulk of seed in most lower end products or in one’s advertising “fast and amazing results”. By no means does this mean that this is a bad family of grass to be putting on your lawn, it just means that it should be used in the correct manner. Rye grass is great for providing a cover for longer germinating grass seeds to grow, it is great for filling in bare spots before weeds can get to them and is generally quite a hearty grass – if with a bit shorter lifespan. This seed should be a part of any good mix, but as a complimentary, not a primary.
Blue Grass
This grass tends to be a thicker bladed grass and prefers sunny areas. Blue grass is one of the more expensive families of grass and very hearty when established, but it can have quite a long germination time. You will find this as the primary in most sod/turf that is laid, and in most large bodies of grass in direct sunlight such as parks and golf courses. In BC this grass can struggle in the acidic soil, shady areas, and near foliage such as cedars and pines that increase the acidity in the soil further. Therefore, it is better used as a primary make up of a seed mixture in Ontario, rather than in BC.
Fescue Grass
Fescue tends to be the heartiest of the three grass families in the long term, and can handle shady, wet, and acidic soils better than most, while still doing well in sun. This is generally a fine or medium bladed grass, with a deep root system, and can have a long germination time. This tends to be a smaller makeup of a seed mixture and is a more expensive seed as blue grass is. The most commonly used is usually a strain of red fescue.
This information is quite often not readily available when you purchase seed, and if it is it may be quite vague such as “contains rye grass”. Without knowing what particular strain you have, it’s an unknown as to how well it will actually perform in the environment it is planted, regardless of what the marketing may tell you. It would be like going back to when food had no ingredient labels, of very minimal ones. Some things to look for are how it handles foot traffic, what temperatures it prefers, amount of water required, tolerance to sun and shade, what type of growth it has (which can help dictate the ideal height to mow) among others…
We at MyLawn.Care have taken all of this into account and blended a mix specifically to perform in the BC lower mainland, so that you do not need to worry about this and can just spread it and enjoy the results!
If you would like to hear more on another topic, or have any questions on the above, feel free to comment below or email us at [email protected]. We are here to help.
