Try http://www.southwestseed.com/

(Their sifting/sorting/bagging facility is a 1/4 mile up the road).

bp, Hachita is the best of the blue grama cultivars. It is also the most expensive. I planted common and Hachita in an inferno strip between the fence and the sidewalk. It has done very well. Grama seed is ultra lightweight so to keep it from blowing away, I sprayed the ground with molasses from a hose-end sprayer, then after I spread the seed I did that again. Because it is so light you get a lot of seed in a lb. but you also get a lot of fluff around it.

Pawnee Buttes, Sharp Bros., High Country Gardens all carry Hachita blue grama. Plants of the Southwest and Western Native Seed (best price) carry common blue grama. It is pricey. Makes sodar look like a bargain. :) There is a seed company near the Utah border that might be able to help you. I've put a link below.

Here is a link that might be useful: Southwest Seed in Delores

Thanks. I knew there would be people here who could help. The place where I get my wheatgrass seed doesn't seem to sell blue grama.

I figured it would be pretty expensive based on a few places I found using Google. I'm still planning to see when it turns brown for the winter and when it starts to green up in the spring before deciding. I may get a small amount and plant it in the hellstrips. They seem to suffer the most in the summer, so maybe a warm season grass is the answer.

I've sent emails to the sites that don't allow me to order online to find out prices.

Jalirancher--since you've planted both common and hachita, how big is the difference in quality? My initial spot for planting is dead most of the year, so it may be that anything would be an improvement. I think the grama I saw that convinced me it could be a turfgrass was hachita, though.

What's the seeding rate for lawns? Everything I see gives seeding rates for reclamation and pasture.

Slight deviation, one reason that the price of grass seed for some species is so high is the amount of waste material thats produced. Not just the chaff, but they sift out at least half (if not more), of viable seed that is smaller than the optimum, premium, size seed that they sell.

Which leads me to the woeful tale of when I first moved here and desperately needed to add organic matter to my badly leached out clay soil. The seed company up the road generously agreed to dump their waste material, the chaff and small seed, at my place, and I would theoretically till it into the ground.

This all happened in January. I got about a hundred cubic yards of waste seed and chaff dumped on the site of my future vegetable garden, where the plan was to compost it a bit, and then till it in. Unfortunately, in the seed sifting process, they lower the moisture content to as low as possible, and the resulting chaff and stuff is very hydrophobic, so it was nearly impossible to get this mountain of stuff moist enough to begin the composting reaction. I tried all kinds of stuff; surfactants, heating the water, spraying it a mist, and so on. No go. All the moisture would run right through it into the ground, and the heap remained too dry to do anything.

April rolls around, and I'm getting desperate, so I spend a few days spreading this mountain out, end up with a knee deep layer of seed and chaff over the entire area. I pulls out the brand new, small Mantis size tiller that I had saved a fabulous $50 bucks by buying it at the end of the season the year before, and try to mix this stuff into the soil.

The reader, at this point, is likely shaking his/her head, saying that that wasn't the tool for the job, and they would be correct. The tiller over-heated and caught on fire. I tried to douse it, but it was too late, burned up all the plastic and stuff on the motor, and lighting the chaff on fire. Get the fire out with a hose, and, properly outraged, I think I can return the tiller to the dealer as a faulty piece of junk. Not so, as this was 9 months after purchasing the thing and they had a clearly written policy about that, in fact, when I brought the smelling thing in to the shop,hoping for sympathy, the guy just pointed to the sign on the wall about 1 month returns. I'd lost the receipt anyway.

Long story short, I finally had a neighbor plow it in, then disc, then till. That summer, in my vegetable garden, I then grew the most astounding crop of native grasses and weeds you ever saw, and I think a zucchini, but I never could find it in the mess.

bp, my Hachita germinated quicker and seems to be a sturdier blade of grass. I can't really detect an overwhelming difference. I know which is which but my neighbors swear they cannot see the difference. The Hachita has a more color to my eye. It might be the proof will be when the grama has been around for a couple more years. This was my grama's second summer.

You should plan on 3-5#s 1000 sq. ft. My inferno strip is about 500 sq. ft. so I used 2#s and split the difference. The molasses made a crucial difference in keeping the feathery seeds where I wanted them. I imagine the high end is if you don't use a binder or the molasses. This stuff is like air, it's so lightweight.

david52:

I guess you ended up getting the organic matter you needed, just a year later than you had planned...

So far, I've only gotten one email response from seed companies (Pawnee Butte) on seeding rates, and I think the response was driven by the size of the standard bag, because the recommendation was for 50 lbs, which translates to 12.5 lbs / 1k sq ft. That's far more than anything else I've seen.

Bp, they sell the seed here; http://www.highcountrygardens.com/27056.html

but it sure looks like there is an error between pounds and ounces.

I agree with David about HCG Hachita. It's $17/lb. Common/native seed is an excellent $7/lb. at www.westernnativeseed.com

Below is a pdf link from CSU turf program about grama and the rates of seeding and care.

Here is a link that might be useful: CSU turf on grama