One of the biggest questions I get about grass seed has to do with growing grass seed in heavy shade. And I understand that this is a tough situation for a lot of you guys. But I can help you and it starts with getting the right grass seed to grow in the shade to begin with.
If you grow the seed from the jump in the shade, and your mixture has a good variety of shade loving grass types, you will be just fine. For best results in the shade, you want to get a mix that contains some fine fescue, creeping red fescue and other fescue blends. In some cases, blue grass and ryegrass will do ok in shade, but the finer fescues do much better in the long run.
It would also help if you could hedge your bets a little and prune out some of the trees that are creating the dense shade situation. What we want is a bare minimum of 3 hours of sunlight hitting the grassy areas each day. That may require you to do some pruning at the tops of the canopy to allow the sun to get thru.
I highly recommend the shade grass seeds reviewed on this page. If you lay em’ down and keep em’ wet, they will grow for ya!
