I hate to break it to you, but there is a good chance that you will have to resod, especially if you used fescue sod. Leaving long clippings on your lawn, and watering on top of that creates a perfect environment for fungal disease, and/or rotting of the blades and crowns. You should have started mowing when the grass was 3.5-4 inches tall. When you saw there was a lot of clumps and clippings on the lawn, you should have mowed again, preferable with the bag to remove them since there was so much of it. You are also watering too much. Once your sod takes root and is growing well you don't have to water daily. There is a slight chance the grass will come back if your crowns didn't die, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Oilpainter - Thank you for the tips. Sounds like I was on track. I feel better knowing I can tuck my babies in safely! Shelley - Your hostas look gorgeous! Now I'd love to pick your brain and find out exactly what you did. I really want to start hostas and have it work this coming winter. Sounds like you WinterSowed them? I did that for a few things. I learned about it around January, which made it a little late to start. The plants I WS'ed did very well, though. I'd love to hear what you did - medium, containers, etc. Did you post details as you did it? I could search back if so. Oilpainter did a good job covering the basics of lasagna/no-till bed preparation. Since I've finally gotten going with starting from seed, I can afford to expand to the gardens I've always wanted. I've never done the no-till thing before, but it's going well. A local appliance store will give me as much cardboard as will fit in my station wagon, leaves & grass can be had at the dump, and a local horse owner bags manure & leaves it out for the taking. Makes the whole thing pretty easy. I was already pretty into composting, so it seems natural. (My DH & kids built me a 3-bin set up for Mother's Day - they knew what I really wanted.) My question for Oilpainter about over-wintering my perennials in a different place was because the process of composting generates heat. The way it happens in no-till gardening isn't as hot as I get in my bins (which get up to 150 degrees), but I'm guessing it's still too much warmth for perennials which should be going dormant for the winter.

Get them planted!! I use 1 litre deep pots 5.5" deep by 5" across with a gritty compost, 1 part each JI no3, peat, and cornish grit, filled nearly to the brim with 20-30 seeds per pot then topped off with quarter-half inch of cornish grit. I soak this from the base till the grit is wet then stand the pots in a deep tray drilled to leave half an inch of water in the base. (slugs cannot cross the water) They sit in this wet cold environment all winter and usually come up with 95% germination in the spring. I pot them on or plant them out when the first proper leaves have formed, the gritty open compost means that you can shake them out very easily and get a good 4" of root, make sure that the tip of the root is pointing down into your planting hole, (deeper pot 2L deep). Previous experiments with more than half an inch of water in the tray caused the seedlings to rot off after germination and without the constant moisture I would get only 30-50% germination, which would somethimes get devoured by a slug in a single meal. As regards open ground, I get quite a few seedlings at the base of their parents where I have not deadheaded, however I believe the mice can see these off once they get the flavour for them....it's worth protecting your seed trays/pots from mice if you can. I checked mine today and the first of this years 50 pots of seed are already germinating. Cheers Greenmaplants

I have to disagree with homehydro on this one. You should probably start over unless you feel like you cannot afford to do so. The pH being wildly thrown around has surely adversely affected plenty of those seeds. I have a hunch that quite a few may not even sprout (although I could be wrong). If you want less headache, less worrying, and a higher probability of success, restart. There are already so many "ifs" in hydroponic growing, that if there is any way you can block a probability and make it a definite, you should probably do it. The only reason NOT to would be for saving cash. Also, about the rockwool cubes: I would soak them. Some say you need to, others say you don't. I say you most certainly should soak the rockwool cubes in a pH balanced water. In fact, I reccomend soaking them in tap water or RO water for say 10 or 15 minutes. Pull them out of that water. Get some new water, and make sure it is as close to 7.0 pH or lower as you can get it. Soak them in this water for 45 minutes. That should do it, and honestly you will be better off because your pH will already be shifty, especially if you are using hard tap water. Using this method of pre-treating the rockwool cubes, you wil have less trouble in the long run! If you don't want to mess with getting a pH perfect solution, you can actualy purchase rockwool conditioner that apparently many people find to work great. Some of it even includes a great balance of nutrients for your seedlings. Theres my 2 cents!