The Price of Grass

I recently purchased 6 pounds of grass seed to repair the lawn from the severe winter. The 6 pounds cost me $30. Thirty dollars for grass seed? Are you kidding me...that is $5 a pound.

When did grass seed get so expensive and why?

You would figure if you were paying $5 a pound it would be pretty clean, but reading the bag, it has 6% inert material. That means almost an ounce of that pound is not even grass seed. So much for purity.

Now how much area will a pound of grass seed cover for growing in the northeast? About 200 square feet. So not much when you consider that an acre is 43,560 square feet. So to seed a 1 acre lot is about 217 pounds of seed or a little over $1000. All to have a nice green lawn...

So now to compare the cost per pound to other things we purchase. Gas is current $2.60 a gallon, but a gallon of gas weighs 6.25 pounds or about 42 cents a pound (remember that gas is lighter than water). Flour cost about 3.25 for five pounds, breaking down to around 65 cents a pound. Beer weighs about 8.75 pounds per gallon, so lets do some math here...a half keg is 8 gallons and for a decent micro brew is about $175...so 8 times 8.75, divide 175 by 70 equals about $2.50 a pound, still half the price of grass seed. And the Bavarian Purity Law of 1516, limits what can be in beer.

So why is grass seed so expensive....