Jonathan Green 10321 Black Beauty Ultra Grass Seed Mix, 3 Pounds

I live in Northern Virginia and have a lawn with a lot of bare spots, initially it was the old 50+ year old neglected lawn and later after a major house renovation it was a regraded front yard and side yards that had had various things dumped on them and abused. I don't need my lawn to look like a golf course but I don't want bare spots and soil getting washed away by the rain. When I want to repair part of the lawn, I want to go out there and treat the soil, throw on the seed, water it, and then want it to grow in full and healthy. Seems simple, but I had a lot of trouble achieving this with other brands.I tried numerous grass seeds including those from the bins in the local hardware store and Home Depot and other brands, rye fescue, bluegrass, blends, etc I tried this one on the advice of a landscaper who said it was great, and he was right. It is a mix of several different grass seeds but the thing that is very noticeable is that it sprouts pretty quickly (once in 5 days), grows in evenly and quickly, is resistant to weeds and other grasses, and after a few years it is still going strong.The square footage estimates on the packaging are pretty optimistic, for example the 3 pound bag says it can cover 1,200 square feet. That is an area equal to a square 35 feet on a side which is equivalent to a small to medium sized front yard. In my experience when newly seeding an area the actual coverage is somewhere around half of that. The seed really works and so you don't have to seed as densely but to think that you can seed 1,200 square feet with 3 pounds of grass seed is not correct.This seed is relatively expensive but if you have a relatively small spot such as something 5-15 feet on a side and you want to be able to go out and fix it up in one attempt this is the way to go.As a final note in my experience you can't just go out and throw the seed on the hard ground and expect it to somehow magically burrow into the soil. As desperately as I would love to believe that all I have to do is rip open the bag and throw down some seed, in my experience with the hard clay soil in this area, when I do that, the seed just sits on top of the soil until it eventually dries out or is eaten by birds. The top of the soil has to be disrupted in some way, either by a tiller or shovel or other garden implement. This doesn't actually take a whole lot of time or work but it is tedious so you think it'll take forever. I will go out and literally hack into the soil in a back and forth pattern with a hand-held "ugly tool" or similar to break up the first 0.5-1.0 inches of soil, in preparation for seeding. And then after I seed I put down "tacky straw" to hold the seed in place and keep it moist until it germinates. This in my experience is the only way to get new seed to sprout on the tough clay soils.

My lawn is over a year old now. The builder hydro seeded last year in the middle of summer. I fought weed pressure all last season. Then It looked thin and very spotty with many weeds last fall. The builder hydro seeded last spring. This spring it was green but many weeds and bare spots. I fertilized and spot treated weeds. I also swapped out my irrigation controller. But I also attribute the current look of my lawn to overseeding with Jonathan Green Black Beauty Ultra. It filled in the bare spots and really thickened up the lawn. It has a nice rich green color. Several of the neighbors have commented on on how nice it looks and asked how I got such great results in only a year. I will be over sending with this next fall as well. In fact I will be using this seed every fall from here on in. I am very pleased with it.

Live in Zone 8+/-. Spread during a warm snap in February, then turned cold again. But when Spring finally set in and got some rain, this seed came in really strong and really lush. I have great hopes for it during our hot summer...its in shaded area (about 30' x 50') of backyard and is really lush and dark green...like a fine carpet. I wish I had done this to the front yard 'cause the Bermuda out there is in too much shade and yard looks puny by comparison to the Black Beauty.

I live in Laredo and decided to plant a lawn in my front yard in the heat of summer (100-110 degrees depending on the day). We have sandy desert soil here. I used Scott's Turf Builder Seeding Soil as a topsoil for the seed. I have watered a few times each day as needed to counter the scorching weather. Within 10 days to 2 weeks blades were popping up everywhere and now at 4 weeks I have a, lush, deep green lawn that is getting thicker every day. My wife was skeptical from the start and didn't believe I could get a lawn to grow here in this summer weather. Needless to say she is impressed. Great product. Hearty and beautiful grass. I highly recommend Black Beauty Ultra and am going to order more and expand my lawn area!

The seed itself is great stuff. Comes in with great green color, thick, and stands tall. It also does well in heat and lower water situations so far for me.But, there's a downside. Ive been buying this seed for 2 years now from Amazon. Every year, I seem to get a bag of almost 1 year old seed delivered. Take a look at all the negative reviews, I bet those people put down some old seed. Every month seed ages, it looses germination percentage. This is high quality seed, but even that wont help if the stuff is a year old. The seller needs to do a better job managing inventory. If I am going to pay full price for seed, I want fresh seed that germinates as expected.This has to be damaging the reputation of such a reputable seed. Do know, if you buy this and get a fresh bag, you have GREAT STUFF on your hands. Just, be cautious and read the label incase you get send old stock.

Great grass seed

I have used a lot of grass seeds from different companies. I have never had seeds not germinate. Even the cheapest seeds germinated. So I decided to give this company a try. Not one seed germinated. I scalped my lawn, dethatched, laid down new soil, put the seeds down, and covered the seeds with a light coat of soil. The temperature was between 75 and 80 in the daytime. The first week I had to manually water my lawn but the next two weeks were sunny days with showers. It didn't rain hard. Just showers 4 to 5 times per day. I ran out of seeds so I used some tall fescue from another company to do the back of my yard. That area has already needed to be cut. I guess this company don't know the hard work that people do to fix their yards. I read a lot of people complaining about the grass not growing and that they had old seeds but the company never respond. I'll rather take a chance with seeds from a dollar store before I ever put these seeds in my yard again