You can buy a bag with that name on it in half the stores in the county. What you cannot do is find out what is in it from the name, because the university whose name it borrows has nothing to do with the seed, and has said so plainly.
Peter Landschoot, who spent 35 years as Penn State Extension’s turfgrass specialist, has put it plainly: Penn State has nothing to do with the companies marketing these mixes, with the makeup of the mix, or with the seed. The mixes can contain just about anything — sometimes good, sometimes very poor.
The name on the front means nothing
Every company printing those words on a bag uses a different blend. Two bags with the same name can hold entirely different grass. The front of the bag is advertising. The tag on the back is the law.
Named varieties, not blanks
Good seed lists a variety by name. If the tag reads “variety not stated,” or just names a species with nothing attached, you are buying whatever was cheapest that year.
Here is what is on the tag of the seed we put down:
Three named varieties, nothing hidden behind a species name.
Two numbers settle it
Penn State’s advice: germination of at least 80 percent, and a test date within nine months of the day you buy it. Old seed on a shelf comes up thin no matter what the front of the bag promised.
What we put down, and when
We seed turf type tall fescue exclusively. It roots deeper than the bluegrass blends most lawns here were started with, and deeper roots are what carry a lawn through a dry spell.
We seed in fall. Spring seeding sounds appealing and rarely works: the ground is not warm enough until late May, which means no crabgrass control on that lawn all season, and new seedlings spend their first summer losing to weeds. Seed in September and those plants get autumn, winter, and a full spring to put roots down before they meet their first real heat.