I also meant to add that when I moved into this house I actually laid new turf down rather than seed, that was about 4 years ago.
Not sure if this helps matters.

On May 2, 6:06*pm, Oozmiester
wrote:
Oozmiester;957699 Wrote:

Hi Red, I answered in one of the posts above where I was from.

I'm in the United Kingdon, Scotland.
We don't usually get great summers and usually we have plenty of rain.
The type of grass seed I am using is Mascot grass seed R13 (is this good
seed) ?
I only have a small garden, which is 8 x 6 meters.
Soil looks hard packed, not loose.
I have never had my soil sample analyzed - not sure where I could get
this done but I could look into that.

I also meant to add that when I moved into this house I actually laid
new turf down rather than seed, that was about 4 years ago.
Not sure if this helps matters.

--
Oozmiester

Googling produces this about your seed:

Cost effective mixture for general sports areas where finance is
important.
• Quick establishment. Formulated using STRI rated cultivars.
• Helena helps density of sward and drought tolerance.
• High summer wear tolerance (French National List Trials 2006).

50% Neruda 1 perennial ryegrass
25% Helena slender creeping red fescue
25% Mystic strong creeping red fescue


Should be fine for full sun to partial shade. And
these grasses should germinate in 7 to 10 days.
But some additional points:

It also depends on temps. You need soil temps in the
50s for seed to germinate. That generally means
daytime temps in the 60s.

Nothing wrong with using that seed for a lawn. But
it's optimized to be cheap and for use on athletic
fields and similar. Meaning it's less expensive as
seed, establishes quickly and can withstand a lot of traffic.
But it's usually not going to look as nice as a lawn could
that uses a mix designed to grow a really top end
lawn.

Among the tradeoffs with seed mix a

how quickly it establishes
how it stands up to traffic
how much water it needs
how much fertilizer it needs
how quickly it greens up in spring
how well it holds color into winter
disease resistance
color
texture, ie is it coarse or fine
whether it can self repair via rhizomes
texture

If you're just looking for a typical lawn, the
seed you're using should be fine and it's
not the source of your problem unless there
is something actually wrong with it, like
it's been sitting around in a poor environment
for many years.