Brunnings Tough Lawn Seed, what it is and when to sow it

June 23, 2025

Brunnings Tough Lawn Seed is the bag people pick up when the back lawn has been flogged by the dog and a long hot summer and they'd rather fix it than pay for turf, and it's worth knowing what's actually in it before you sow it, because it behaves a bit differently to the grass a lot of people think they're getting.

What's in the bag

It's a couch based blend, and the pack says it carries a wetting agent as well, which helps water soak into dry ground instead of running off the top. Couch is a warm season grass that spreads by runners, so it knits itself together and fills its own gaps over time, and it copes with heavy foot traffic and dry spells better than most lawns will. The pack says it suits clay or sandy soil, and it's made for both jobs, starting a new lawn or thickening up a thin one.

When to sow it here

Couch only germinates once the soil is warm, so it goes in from late spring and through summer once the soil has properly warmed up. Seed sown into cold ground in early spring or autumn tends to sit there doing nothing, and a fair bit of it never comes up. The pack puts establishment at 7 to 10 days, and that's in warm conditions with the seed kept damp.

How far a bag goes

According to the pack, a 1kg bag covers 30 square metres of new lawn, or oversows 60 square metres of existing lawn. Tipping it on heavy only gives you crowded seedlings competing with each other, so go off the rate on the bag.

Sowing it so it takes

Get the weeds out first and rake the surface up hard, because seed dropped onto compacted ground mostly sits there and blows away. Spread the seed evenly, ideally with a hand spreader, then rake it in very lightly so it's just in contact with the soil and not buried. The part that decides whether it works is the watering, so keep the top few millimetres damp every day until it's up and growing, because letting it dry out once at the wrong moment is how a new lawn fails. Leave the first mow until the grass is tall enough to take a cut on a high setting.

The two things nobody tells you

Couch goes dormant in a cold winter, so it'll go off colour and look half dead through the frosty months here, and then it greens back up as the weather warms. That's normal and it isn't the lawn dying. The other thing is that the same runners that repair your lawn will happily head into your garden beds, so a hard edge along the beds you care about saves a lot of weeding later on.

Shop related products

Brunnings Tough Lawn Seed 1kg. The couch blend this post is about, for thickening or starting a lawn.
Brunnings Kikuyu Lawn Seed 1KG. The other warm season option, a vigorous runner for big areas.
Brunnings Turbo Patch Repairer For Lawns 800g. For a few bare patches rather than a whole lawn.
Brunnings Green Up Lawn Food 2.5kg. A lawn food for once the new grass is up and being mown.

Did you know we also keep a handheld fertiliser spreader and a lawn aerator in the shop, and neither is on the website, so give us a ring on (08) 8536 4333 to check what's on the shelf.

The rest of the lawn range is in our garden centre, and if you're not sure whether couch or kikuyu suits your yard, come in and have a chat with us.