GardenBanter.co.uk - View Single Post

13-06-2006, 08:06 PM posted to alt.home.lawn.garden

wrote:
My town recently ripped up my lawn near the road for some construction.
When it was done, they replanted the lawn with stuff I had never seen
before. It looked like small blue-green chunks. But it grew fantastic
grass very quickly. what is this stuff? I've only used regular seed
before, but I'd love to buy some of this blue-green clumpy stuff.
Thanks.

That's hydraulic mulch, which is made of cellulose. It's purpose is to
absorb water and keep the seed moist while it germinates. It's widely
used to do hydroseeding, where they spray it out of a truck. It can
also be hand applied for small jobs.

Many of the home center stores sell products which are hydraulic mulch,
seed, and fertilizer mixed and bagged together for patching. You can
also buy the hydraulic mulch by itself, which allows you to use seed of
your own choice, but I have only seen it sold that way at
agri/landscape distributors.

It does work very well in getting good germination, especially if you
need to do it at the wrong time of year. I still can't figure out
why they can't make it so it's really green though. The ones I've
seen are more blue than green.