People with hay fields in the NE

[WhitePineJunky]

Grass goes in in April-May like red fife (Marquis) wheat before the soil gets dry by the middle or late June. The wheat we grow has origins in Ukraine. The red fife was luck, found in testing of grains over 100 years ago shipped from Scotland which was a spring wheat, but only one plant in with winter wheat seed. Then it was rediscovered from Ukraine and given a new name, but found to be the same. Funny how stuff works out.

That was my experience last spring, it took off the areas I planted in mid or late April, the grass had time to grow thick enough to atleast retain some moisture and keep the sun off the ground, the areas I put seed down later was much tougher and if you can't get a sprinkler out there at least forget it IMO. Bare soil anyway

[Brad_bb]

The soil samples we send get sent to a lab.  

[newoodguy78]

WhitePineJunky something to consider when trying to establish grasses outside of ideal times is mixing your seed in with a nurse crop yup another term for cover crop. Doing this helps foster the conditions your crop of choice prefers. Typically a cover/nurse crop grows faster than grass seed for example. Doing so it holds moisture and provides shade. Just the shade alone drops the temperature at seed level and promotes better germination and gives the grasses a better start, suppressing weeds at the same time. 

Hard thing to explain however I've been impressed with the results. At this point putting in a straight seeding without a cover is out of the question for me. 

[SwampDonkey]

Yes, under sewing with clover in the mix is common here with grass or wheat. Thus timothy/clover mixes for hay ground. But your best results will be April/May sewing. Wheat ground is limed liberally up here. It's a crop rotation for potatoes.