Don't rototill. Yes, every magazine and all the books tell you to rototill, but don't. I used to work with in the grading business and we just sort of laughed at the recommendations to rototill. The problem is unless you have a rototiller on a tractor, a human being cannot hold a tiller perfectly level for even 1 foot of travel. You end up with an uneven subsurface. When the level surface settles (it takes 3 years), you are left with the profile of the original uneven subsurface. Don't rototill. If we can assume your soil is intact and did not wash away with the storm, then at most you would need minor leveling...if that. Preparing the surface can be done with anything you can drag across the surface to loosen the very top of the crust. You need only slightly loosen the surface. You will be rolling the seed down into that loosened surface after you scatter it. A piece of chain link fence with some weight on it makes an excellent drag. Drag it in all directions. In the previous efforts to establish seed, was the area watered briefly, several times per day, every day, for 2 weeks? It sounds like it was not. Seed needs continual moisture to germinate so you have to keep it moist. If it gets that, it is hard to prevent it from sprouting.

Posted by kachinee (My Page) on Tue, Jun 19, 07 at 16:28 I entirely disagree with the prior poster based upon my own experience and my 1.25 acres of lawn grown from seed. Check the Lawncare forum for other opinions. I would never rent a seeder. They are contraptions,,, a complete waste of time and money. You can spread seed and starter fertilzer with a regular lawn spreader and rake it in with a 36" grading rake. A core aerator would be ideal to rough up the top soil and provide little holes and pieces of dirt to rake the seed in. I try to avoid renting anything, especially contraptions like a lawn seeder. ********************************************************** Hey, if that method works for you, then fine. But to dismiss slit seeders as a "contraption" just because you are too cheap to rent a purpose-built machine isn't really helpful. I totally redid my front lawn a few years ago after doing a fair bit of trenching for electrical and water lines. After considerable tilling and levelling, I used a power-driven slit-seeder to insert my grass seed at the CORRECT level below grade. Having seed drop into deep holes created by a plug aerator is pointless. Seed should be a mere quarter inch under the soil and kept damp continously so that it will sprout quickly and begin to establish root growth which will then send up new grass shoots to fill in the spaces. Slit seeders are a conraption that actually works and they save you immense amounts of time. You make your passes with it and you are done. Just put the water to it and wait for the growth. Now, if you prefer all that manual labour needed to broadcast seed around and then trying to rake it in so that the birds won't feast on it over the next few days, then knock yourself out. ME? I've got better things to do than to sweat my nibbly bits off for hour after hour with a garden rake. If slit-seeders didn't work or didn't do a first-rate job, then landscape companies wouldn't spend thousands buying them. But of course, you don't understand the concept of spending money to make money, do you?

Hey guys....I went to Craigslist and went to the FREE section. I grabbed up any couches that were being given away and managed to get 3 in a week, and those were just the addresses close to me! So I took the cushions and cut them up into cubes, and ripped off as much foam from around the arm rests, sides, and back, and I ended up with thousands of cubes from just 3 couches. Obviously this isn't for everyone. You need to live close enough to a large city to find free couches, AND you need to be able to dispose of all the wood, staples, and fabric left over after you strip them down. After hours of cutting and being very careful to make prefect cubes, I just started ripping off pieces and then cutting them into small pieces, and I stopped caring if they were square, round, or shaped like the face of baby Jesus. Not counting my labor, I now have thousands of foam starter cubes for free!

It will grow two or three fronds a year when young and then they get faster.Here they will be 3 ft overall in a few years.After you soak them and then let them dry one day the outer seed coat will come off easy.It will just crumble off the seed. Email me if they don't germinate and Ill see if I can help you find more.