Grass seed and straw bales

The County requires disturbed areas to be seeded for stabilization 7 days after the end of grading activities.  Progress is slow on my end (for various reasons) getting financing and permits in place, so I had to do something.  Knowing that I'm going to have to maintain a big giant area of grass and knowing that trying to  mow bumpy lawn is a PITA, I rented a bulldozer and smoothed out the site as best I could.  This is the Case 650K I used.

After smoothing out the grade as much as possible, it was time to seed.  Laura and I used two broadcast spreaders to spread 450 lbs. of fescue grass seed.  I got a pretty good deal from John Speelman at Poolesville Hardware.  Here is Laura spreading grass seed with a broadcast spreader.  Laura is the little pink blurb on the right.  It only took a few hours.

Once the grass seed was down, the County requires straw on top.  I had absolutely no idea how much area straw would cover, so google it I did.  I came across estimates of 500 sq ft of coverage for a bale if blown on, 300 sq ft if shaken on by hand.  That came out to 175 bales needed for 2 acres of site.

Well, those estimates were WAY off.  We covered the site using an Agri Metal blower in the back of the truck using only about 60 bales.  And it was not weak coverage.  Maybe the bales we get are more dense than what the internet gets.  Oh well, live and learn.

I'll post pics when the grass starts to grow.