Why Is Grass Seed So Expensive? (And How to Spend Less per Square Foot)

Short answer: grass seed is expensive because it is a slow, weather-exposed farm crop grown in a few places, then cleaned, tested and certified before it reaches a bag. Almost two-thirds of US cool-season turf seed comes from one region, Oregon’s Willamette Valley, and a Kentucky bluegrass field gives no harvest in the year it is planted, so a drought there shows up on shelves the following spring. The price per pound is also a poor guide to what a lawn costs: bluegrass has roughly 2 million seeds per pound and is sown at about 2 lb per 1,000 sq ft (1 kg per 100 m²), while tall fescue has about 227,000 seeds per pound and needs 6 to 8 lb for the same area. Compare cost per 1,000 sq ft, read the label for weed seed, other crop and coating, and sow once at the right time.

Where your grass seed actually comes from

Grass seed is a field crop, not a factory product. According to Oregon State University, Oregon produces almost two-thirds of all cool-season grass seed grown in the United States, essentially all of the country’s annual ryegrass, perennial ryegrass, bentgrass and fine fescue, and a large share of its Kentucky bluegrass and tall fescue. In 2017 the state harvested more than 600 million pounds of seed from over 400,000 acres on nearly 1,500 farms. The valley suits the crop because wet winters grow the plants and dry summers ripen the seed in the field.

Kentucky bluegrass is even more concentrated. University of Idaho Extension reports that Idaho, Washington and Oregon produce about 90 percent of US bluegrass seed, with Idaho alone growing half of it.

Five costs baked into every bag

• A year with no crop. Bluegrass seedlings must reach a certain size and then pass through short days and cold to be induced to flower, so a spring-sown field gives its first seed harvest the following summer at the earliest, and two years after planting in short-season areas, according to the University of Idaho bulletin above.
• Establishment and annual costs. The same bulletin puts bluegrass stand establishment at roughly $230 to $400 per acre and annual production at $350 to $600 per acre, with stands lasting 3 to 10 years under a burn system and about 3 years without burning. Burning restrictions in Washington and Idaho shortened stand life and raised costs.
• Low yields of tiny seed. Manitoba Agriculture gives typical bluegrass seed yields of 300 to 600 lb per acre. The light, fluffy seed is also hard to separate from straw; conventional combines may need two passes.
• Harvest risk. Fields are swathed, dried for at least 10 days, then combined. Cut too early and germination drops; too late and the seed shatters onto the ground.
• Cleaning, testing and certification. Every lot is cleaned and tested for purity and germination. Certified (blue tag) seed goes further: AOSCA, the association of official certifying agencies, requires field inspections for variety identity, purity and isolation, checks on land history, and laboratory tests before a lot can carry the blue tag.

Why the price jumps some years

With supply this concentrated, one bad season moves the whole market. In July 2021 the Oregon Seed Association reported that the North Unit Irrigation District in Central Oregon, which grows about 20 percent of US Kentucky bluegrass and 80 percent of US Poa trivialis on around 12,600 acres, had cut its water allotment by 20 percent with its reservoir at 8 percent of capacity. Farm-gate seed prices had already risen more than 50 percent on the year (bluegrass from about $1.20 to $2 per pound) and some growers abandoned fields. Increases like that reach retail bags the following spring. Supply also cannot respond quickly: a bluegrass field planted in response to high prices gives nothing for a year or more, so shortages linger.

Price per pound is the wrong number

Species differ enormously in seed size, so a pound of one grass covers far more ground than a pound of another. UMass Extension lists approximate seed counts and minimum quality standards:

Seeding rates are from Cornell University and the NC State Extension Gardener Handbook. If bluegrass costs twice as much per pound as tall fescue, it is still cheaper per 1,000 sq ft, because you sow 2 lb instead of 6 to 8 lb; a 3 lb bag of bluegrass and a 10 lb bag of tall fescue cover about the same area. Divide the bag price by the area it seeds at the recommended rate, and the “expensive” seed is often the bargain.

Seed count also decides what a mix really contains. Cornell points out that a bag labelled 70 percent perennial ryegrass and 30 percent Kentucky bluegrass by weight is roughly 50:50 by seed number, because each pound of bluegrass holds about six times as many seeds.

Coated seed: you are paying for clay by the pound

Coated seed is wrapped in limestone, gypsum or clay bound with polymer, sometimes with fungicide or a water-holding gel. The coating counts as inert matter and must be declared on the label with its percentage. The USDA NRCS Plant Materials Program shows a heavily coated lot with 34 percent coating material by weight, against about 9 percent for a light coating; in their example a planting that needed 8.0 lb of bare seed needed 11.8 lb of the coated product to deliver the same live seed. NC State’s handbook says plainly that if seed is coated, seeding rates may need to be doubled. A coated bag that looks cheaper per pound can therefore cost more per square foot. Check the coating percentage before comparing prices.

How to read the label in 60 seconds

State seed laws require an analysis tag on every bag. The Office of Indiana State Chemist at Purdue and UMass Extension describe the parts that matter for price:

To turn the tag into a price you can compare, work out pure live seed (PLS): purity multiplied by germination. UMass gives the example of 90 percent purity and 90 percent germination, which is 81 percent live seed. Divide the recommended seeding rate by that figure to get how much of that bag you need, then price it per 1,000 sq ft.

Cheap-mix traps

• Annual ryegrass filler. It germinates in days, which makes a budget mix look successful. Purdue Turf Science calls it a common ingredient in low-quality mixtures: it is a winter annual that emerges in spring after a fall seeding, forms coarse, light-green clumps, sets seed and dies in summer heat. Purdue advises mixes with no annual, Italian or intermediate ryegrass.
• High “other crop.” Bentgrass or tall fescue in a bluegrass mix makes permanent off-colour patches that no selective herbicide removes.
• Old test dates. Germination falls in storage; a bag tested a year ago at 80 percent may be well below that now.
• Unnoticed coating or inert matter. A third of the bag can be mineral or chaff, sold at seed prices.

How to spend less per square foot

1. Measure the lawn and buy by rate. Length times width in feet, divided by 1,000, times the rate in the table above. Check the rate on the back, not the coverage claim on the front.
2. Choose the species for the site before the price. Shade, traffic, irrigation and climate decide which grass persists; the wrong species has to be bought again next year. Our comparison of St. Augustine, Bermuda, Zoysia, fescue and buffalo grass covers the main choices.
3. Overseed thin turf rather than starting over. A thin lawn needs less seed than bare soil and none of the topsoil and grading costs. Deal with weeds first, as explained in our guide to killing weeds before overseeding.
4. Sow once, at the right time. Iowa State University Extension puts the best window for cool-season lawns at mid-August to mid-September: warm soil for fast germination, cool weather for growth, and little weed competition. Spring sowings fight crabgrass and summer heat and are the ones most often repeated. Warm-season grasses go in late spring.
5. Prepare the seedbed. Seed lost to runoff or poor contact is the most expensive seed of all. Loosen the surface, sow, cover to 1/8 to 1/4 inch (3 to 6 mm) and roll lightly, as Iowa State recommends. See how to prepare soil for grass seed.
6. Calibrate the spreader and split the pass. Weigh out the amount for a known area, set the spreader low, and sow half in one direction and half at right angles.
7. Do not sow heavy “to be safe.” NC State warns that higher rates produce weak, thin stands more prone to disease, See our post on sowing too much grass seed.
8. For large areas, buy bare, named-cultivar seed from a turf supplier. Professional bags are sold by species and cultivar, usually uncoated, and blue-tag certified seed rarely costs more per square foot once purity is taken into account.

When to expect results (so you do not buy seed twice)

Many second purchases happen because the first sowing was judged too soon. Perennial ryegrass and tall fescue emerge in roughly a week to ten days in warm soil; NC State notes that bluegrass takes 7 to 14 days longer than other cool-season grasses. Cornell’s figures for full establishment are under three months for perennial ryegrass and 9 to 12 months for Kentucky bluegrass. A bluegrass lawn sown in September that looks thin in November has not failed; it fills in by rhizomes the next summer. Judge a fall seeding the following June and overseed only the genuinely bare patches.

Sources

• Oregon State University – Willamette Valley Grass Seed Production
• University of Idaho Extension – Kentucky Bluegrass Production (BUL 842)
• Manitoba Agriculture – Kentucky Bluegrass Seed Production
• Oregon Seed Association – Drought in Central Oregon Could Impact Global Seed Supply (2021)
• AOSCA – Seed Certification
• UMass Extension – Understanding the Turfgrass Seed Label
• Office of Indiana State Chemist, Purdue – How to Read a Seed Tag
• USDA NRCS Plant Materials Program – Coated Seed and Pure Live Seed (Plant Chat, 2015)
• Cornell University – Turfgrass Seeding Rates
• NC State Extension – Extension Gardener Handbook, Chapter 9: Lawns
• Purdue Turf Science – Annual Ryegrass Showing Up in Lawns
• Iowa State University Extension – Seeding a New Lawn