3 pounds : 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.

Good, hardy grass. Nice color. Almost surreal germination time.

Super product with great results.

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.

Excellent product. Worked in the shade!