Tips for a thyme lawn

Have you or someone you know successfully established a thick patch of thyme on a lawn or walkway? What advice can you offer?

My research says that transplants should be put 6 to 12 inches apart. Seeding your own transplants would be much cheaper.

They like a lot of compost, and potassium, so wood ash is good to add. It was also said that if doing a large area, you should start in one patch and take clumps of that patch and expand outwards.

to prepare the ground you must remove the sod, (which can be done by plowing, or covering with tarps, clear plastic, or some other form of solarization), and add amendments, (can be worked into the soil or left on the surface)

Plant, water, observe, adapt?

Something like this...

I've been wanting to do this for awhile.

Is there any place to get seed cheaply? I bought a packet of "magic carpet" thyme, to try out from a place called outsidepride and it ran $10 a packet. Packet supposedly covers 10 sq ft I think. At that rate it would cost a fortune to do even my small yard.

I would start small and propagate plants Thymes are quite hardy and easy to take cuttings from . There are many many verieties Try Pink Chinz or Blessingham or Russetings for different colours leaves and flowers Here in europe you can buy plants for less than 3$ and devide them ten times in a season

I found 100 grams for $70 in Canada, which at 5000 seeds per gram, would give 500 000 seeds. Ive never had good germination rates with thyme seeds but I haven't tried direct seeding.

I'm on my phone posting this and don't know how to make a clickable hyperlink so here's the best I can do for a link to the seed source.....

http://www.damseeds.ca/productcart/pc/viewCategories.asp?idCategory=1534

I've never succeeded with thyme because I'm a lazy waterer. But this is a good place to get seed, imo. http://www.thymegarden.com/Mixed%20Creeping%20Thyme

I had no luck germinating thyme seeds last year. Cuttings are the normal way to propagate it. Seed might work if you have better controlled conditions than I did.

this is best price i could find for non-sale thyme starters:
http://www.comnur.com/groundco.htm
they have a pretty good reputation, though i'll probably wait until spring to order as i've been scrounging the clearance items from the local nurseries.

growing thyme from seed has been so far frustrating for me as i prefer to direct sow.
it appears that they need the perfect conditions to sprout and the weed seeds overtake the area beforehand.

It's gonna be difficult to get good germination with thyme in a broadcast context. Really small seeds that need to be pushed into the soil surface and kept moist. Definitely better to germinate in flats.

Propagating by root divisions would nearly guarantee transplant success. But that is a lot of plants. Maybe start with a small area and gradually expand? That's what I would do.

But really, why replace one monoculture with another? Grass is the natural skin of the Earth. It gets a lot of unfair criticism. Maybe in a dry Mediterranean climate I could see the preference for thyme over grass, if water conservation is key. But in most climates, grass is going to grow far better than thyme. I am forever weeding grass out of my thyme patch!

Biodiversity for the win! Plant a lovely polyculture, just like nature does!

good luck!