Hi!

We are still well into our Aeration and Seeding season! This wet weather is perfect for it!

doesn't rye sprout faster than other grasses? for erosion purposes would it help to mix some rye in with the fescue seed? my garden tractor has a class 0 3 pt hitch so iran a disc over this & the surrounding areas.

It does depend a bit on your location. For the northern tier, seeding season is over. In the transition zone, it would depend a lot more. Down south, it's also over--for different reasons and different grasses.

You might get annual rye to sprout, which you can kill out next summer and seed formally with a lawn. It's likely to be thin, but anything will help with erosion.

I agree with sowing annual rye at this point, to just get something coming up quickly. It's a very hardy winter grass. Then put down something perennial in the spring. But it would very much help if you shared your growing zone and/or location.

What I'm absolutely NOT a fan of is a seed mixture. I'm in the northern edge of USDA zone 7, and I sewed what was called a "contractor's mix" a few years back. Worst lawn decision I've ever made. I didn't know so many shades of green and textures of grass existed. Now I'm trying to convert it to a Zoysia lawn. Cool season grasses are too wimpy to survive our hot humid summers here in the Ohio river valley, and most warm season grasses are not cold hardy enough.

If you're in the north, go with a pure bag of seed of ONE type of grass. My top picks for cool season are perennial rye and creeping red fescue. In my opinion Kentucky 31, a wildly popular grass around here, just looks like a slightly better crabgrass with those darn wide blades. For warm season, I'd sow or plug a hybrid cold hardy Bermuda such as Yukon or the newer Latitude 36, or plug Zenith Zoysia. I have Yukon Bermuda in the front yard in full sun and it's doing great and spreading.

how deep do Bermuda roots go? I have some Bermuda along the street. it crept into a flower bed & i'm having a hard time controlling it. my yard has a lot of areas that are crabgrass & nut sedge. this a yard I inherited when we bought this house.

I would call Bermuda a shallow rooter, but a prolific one. As far as erosion control, my opinion is that Bermuda doesn't love a heavy clay soil. If it's properly mended with some topdressing of a 70/30 sand/garden soil mix and regularly aerated, it will take hold just fine.

Notice you buffered my point about it though, because you said it creeps into flower beds, which is definitely true. Flower beds are usually full of mulch, garden soil and loose organic matter, so of course they are inviting to Bermuda, at least until it encounters too much shade.

As far as the crab and nut, go with either Prodiamine or Dithiopyr as a pre emergent in the early spring for the crab, and Sedgehammer to control the nut post emergent. If you are going to try and have a warm season lawn, you can use something like Celsius to control crab post emergent, if you're willing to pay a little cash.