Text book (as far as I can see) overseeding of my (sparse) lawn: kill moss, scarify, cut, feed, sow, water 1-2 times daily for 2 weeks.

Not a single seed germinated (or eaten by birds!).

What am I doing wrong? £10 wasted on seed 😡

Two weeks is still early days – A little more patience and assuming all is well (and the grass is exposed to sunlight) I reckon you’ll start seeing results soon.

Scarify to remove moss/ thatch or did you loosen compacted soil?
Did you add more topsoil?
Temperature in a good germination range?
Every spring I dethatch, core aerate, fertilise, seed and redress lawn. 1 week to sprout seeds with no lawn traffic

Cheers – it’s been pretty cold up here (no frost though), I did nowt to the soil. Most of it gets good sunlight.

without loosening the top surface of soil, compacted turf can be literally bulletproof.
You need consistant 10deg + soil temp for germination. Colder than that and not much will happen. Once it does warn up, things will happen quickly, but if theres no where for the roots to go and rhizomes to spread then it wont be a very durable lawn (to traffic or drought)

Ours has been down 4 weeks and about 50p worth of seed has come up… always the same.

You need to soak it with water if it’s not raining every day.

Cheers, hopefully some warmth will help if it comes. I’ll maybe rake in some topsoil too, and keep watering.

Over-seeding has a very low success rate as the seeds don’t get any purchase. If you cover the seeds with Lawn Dressing it gives them a moist mixture to germinate in and get started. I’ve just done all the patches in our lawn and have 1″ grass after 10 days from new seed.

As above it take a surprising amount of time to germinate, and even then it’ll look like a teenagers chin hairs for ages but should come good.. or has on the several lawns I’ve reseeded

I mixed sand, compost and seed last year – didn’t make much difference. This year it was just chucked down – it’s thickened out the main body fairly well, or it will when it grows well enough, but the bare bits around the edges are still quite bare. I’ll re-do those with some lawn dressing or some of that coir stuff perhaps.

Coir stuff is very expensive, 25kg of lawn dressing is £4 at local Garden Centre…..