Help with sodding yard!

trjonte – posted 23 July 2003 22:54

First let me say that I am a new homeowner and have no clue about turf. I live in Dallas TX.I am re sodding my lawn with St. Augustine, because I had giant bare spots due to a large tree. I took the old sod off with a shovel by scrapping the first inch of soil off and all the grass. Is there anything else I need to do to the dirt before laying the sod? Is a Texas July a good time to lay new sod?

Also when laying the sod is there any substitute for using a roller to make sure there no air between the sod and soil to insure good growth? I am going to be laying the sod solid NOT in a checkerboard fashion? Is it recommended to lay it solid or in a checkerboard fashion? Please help with the nuances of laying sod? I only want to do this once and not waste my money and time not to mention my aching back.Thanks For the help.

redbird – posted 24 July 2003 07:52

Use Round-up or Spectracide (I personally like Spectracide) to kill any unwanted grass species/weeds. You may need multiple applications. Remember that you must wait 7 – 10 days from your last application to seed or lay sod.

I am making the assumption that the lawn is properly graded – if not, take care of it before you put down sod. A contractor will do this for you for $150 – $400, depending upon the local standard price and the size of your lawn. Fix any bumps, high spots or ponding areas.

Ideally, the lawn should be roto-tilled (This is a matter of opinion – some believe that this will expose buried weed seeds and promote a new weed crop. I have seen this to be more of an issue with seeding a lawn, rather than sodding). Alternately, the dirt should at least be raked to provide a broken surface for the sod’s roots to enter. If you lay sod over beds of dead weeds/grass, you run the risk of the root ends not being able to effectively reach the soil beneath. Remember, your ideal goal is direct soil to soil contact between the sod bottoms and the lawn bed.

Lightly water the lawn before you lay sod (carefully to avoid creating a mud pit – you just want the ground to be very slightly damp).

Lay the sod checkerboard fashion, like brickwork – yes, you should do this! If all of the sod pieces are lined up with each other, you will create long, running seams in your lawn. These will be highly visible, take a long time to grow in well and you may end up creating trenches from water run-off when you irrigate.

Regarding rolling – it is best, it is important, but I have seen lawns turn out OK without it.

Benefits of rolling:

1) Every sod piece will have full contact with the soil. There will be no dead spots where the roots are exposed to air pockets and dry out. Who wants dead areas in brand new sod? This is more critical when your lawn bed is not perfectly smooth.

2) If you water very heavily prior to rolling, rolling will actually help to smooth out uneven areas in the lawn – particularly bumps and high places. This is preferable to cursing yourself for NOT rolling as you scalp these areas every time you mow.

Mike

redbird – posted 24 July 2003 08:11

One other thing – I want to make sure there is no misunderstanding on semantics – laying sod “checkerboard fashion” IS laying it solid. It is just a matter of staggering the pieces so that all of the ends do not line up directly with each other- again, laying them like brickwork.

Mike

seed – posted 24 July 2003 09:18

Thanks for the very practical information.

Phil

trjonte – posted 24 July 2003 13:19

Rebird,Thanks for all the advice. I will post back with the results…crossing my fingers …

Tracy

BR 549 – posted 24 July 2003 18:28

I see you said “under trees”.Check available light getting through tree to ground,and obtain best variety suited to hours of light.Might need shade tolerant.Also check Ph of soil,trees can give off acid,making soil Ph low.This might be where your bare spots come from.

trjonte – posted 25 July 2003 19:08

Actually one big silver leaf maple tree. Would this cause the soil to have low pH?

The grass prior was Bermuda and the grass I’m getting is Raleigh St. Augustine. Per the website http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/plantanswers/turf/publications/staug.html “Raleigh is also more shade tolerant than Floratam. But, unlike Floratam, Raleigh is not resistant to lawn chinch bugs.” Should I be worried about cinch bugs? Also I had about 10 Flats of Delmar St. Augustine plugs planted in some of the bare spots around 05/03. Should I leave the plugs and sod around them or remove them?

Thanks too all that has posted, and do post in the future, I am becoming more educated on turf every day.

redbird – posted 28 July 2003 05:59

If you are going to use a St. Augustine (and shade in particular is a consideration) consider “Palmetto” if it isn’t too late. Palmetto is the grass most often recommended by landscape contractors in my area (coastal Georgia)and it is performing extremely well in this area – you would have to do some research to see if you feel it is appropriate for your area, but here is what we are finding in my region:

It is dark green, resistant to fungus (this is a concern in our wet, humid climate, may not be a concern for you), easy to maintain at 3″ (dwarf cultivar), tolerates shade amazingly well, but unlike many St. Augustine varieties which tolerate shade well – it doesn’t tend to thatch in full-sun areas. This means that you don’t have to bother with using different cultivars in different parts of your lawn. It’s root system runs almost twice as deep as Raleigh (assuming you water properly, i.e., deeply and infrequently)to encourage deep root growth. It also greens up earlier/browns later than Raleigh. Although I have no specific information regarding chinch bug resistance, it is common to see about 1/3 of the St. Augustine lawns in my area lose massive patches each year to chinch bugs, bill bugs, mole crickets or fungus. For what it is worth, none of my neighbors with Palmetto have had major damage from these ravages. For information on the cultivar and a listing of sod suppliers, contact Sod Solutions through their web site.

PS – I have decided to be a rebel and use another Sod Solutions cultivar in my lawn – Empire Zoysia. Only time will tell if my lawn retains it’s current beauty. It looks like a golf course right now. I will let you know how it looks as time goes on.

Mike

cboothe – posted 28 July 2003 16:47

Redbird,

About how much was the Empire per pallet? I’m just wondering if it is much more expensive than Floratam as I am considering making the switch.

Thanks,Chris

redbird – posted 29 July 2003 07:04

I believe that it worked out to about $127 per pallet (delivery included) direct from the turf farm.

Pros & cons so far:

1) Virtually weed free (no lawn – or new sod – is COMPLETELY weed free). However, not much can push through the root system and the few grassy weeds which arrived in the sod can’t hold up to a 2″ mowing height.

2) Color – not the absolute best, but extremely good. Much darker emerald green than either bermuda or centipede, doesn’t look quite as dark (to my eye anyway) as Palmetto St. Augustine. If you do not fertilize as recommended with starter fertilizer, this will be exascerbated by individual sod pieces with color variances. With all that I had heard about not over-fertilizing this cultivar, I didn’t do the starter fertilizer at first. When I finally did, WOW – what a difference. The color became uniform and beautiful and the sod piece seams filled in.

3) Shade – doing well (some thinning) in moderate shade. But remember, we are talking about a grass with an extremely dense growth pattern. So, any thinning in shade is barely noticeable.

4) Growth – VEEeeery slow. It took several months for the seams in the sod to become less visible. It recovers slowly from scalping/damage with stray string trimmers – but, it does recover. If you have a lot of rain (making it impossible to control the watering schedule) you will end up mowing much more frequently than advertised. not because of grass blade height, but because of the red seed-heads that sprout up. The seed-heads don’t grow much higher than 3″ – just above the grass blade heights – but they detract from the overall beautiful green color of the lawn. Consequently, during this extremely rainy SE Coastal GA summer, I am mowing on a 5 -6 day cycle, just to keep the lawn color the way that I want.

5) Overall appearance – it stops traffic. It looks like a meticulously maintained golf course. Perfectly smooth and green. No weeds, patchy areas, or color variances.

6) Texture/wearability – the lawn feels like a soft, luxurious, carpet. The family and neighbors love to walk on it barefoot and it hold up very well to traffic. BUT – we bought a cairn terrier puppy and it’s urine might as well be battery acid. The grass is killed in tiny brown circles everywhere he urinates. It comes back in about 2 1/2 – 3 weeks. Our solution – we walk him on a schedule and only play with him in the back yard. The 3″ circles that pop up from his occasional “accidents” in the back yard while playing aren’t a big deal to us. But – if we had stray neighbor dogs peeing on our front yard, I would be very unhappy. Honestly though, I am not sure that this would be different with other grasses. They all hate dog/cat pee.

Mike

redbird – posted 29 July 2003 07:55

I believe that it worked out to about $127 per pallet (delivery included) direct from the turf farm.

Pros & cons so far:

1) Virtually weed free (no lawn – or new sod – is COMPLETELY weed free). However, not much can push through the root system and the few grassy weeds which arrived in the sod can’t hold up to a 2″ mowing height.

2) Color – not the absolute best, but extremely good. Much darker emerald green than either bermuda or centipede, doesn’t look quite as dark (to my eye anyway) as Palmetto St. Augustine. If you do not fertilize as recommended with starter fertilizer, this will be exascerbated by individual sod pieces with color variances. With all that I had heard about not over-fertilizing this cultivar, I didn’t do the starter fertilizer at first. When I finally did, WOW – what a difference. The color became uniform and beautiful and the sod piece seams filled in.

3) Shade – doing well (some thinning) in moderate shade. But remember, we are talking about a grass with an extremely dense growth pattern. So, any thinning in shade is barely noticeable.

4) Growth – VEEeeery slow. It took several months for the seams in the sod to become less visible. It recovers slowly from scalping/damage with stray string trimmers – but, it does recover. If you have a lot of rain (making it impossible to control the watering schedule) you will end up mowing much more frequently than advertised. not because of grass blade height, but because of the red seed-heads that sprout up. The seed-heads don’t grow much higher than 3″ – just above the grass blade heights – but they detract from the overall beautiful green color of the lawn. Consequently, during this extremely rainy SE Coastal GA summer, I am mowing on a 5 -6 day cycle, just to keep the lawn color the way that I want.

5) Overall appearance – it stops traffic. It looks like a meticulously maintained golf course. Perfectly smooth and green. No weeds, patchy areas, or color variances.

6) Texture/wearability – the lawn feels like a soft, luxurious, carpet. The family and neighbors love to walk on it barefoot and it hold up very well to traffic. BUT – we bought a cairn terrier puppy and it’s urine might as well be battery acid. The grass is killed in tiny brown circles everywhere he urinates. It comes back in about 2 1/2 – 3 weeks. Our solution – we walk him on a schedule and only play with him in the back yard. The 3″ circles that pop up from his occasional “accidents” in the back yard while playing aren’t a big deal to us. But – if we had stray neighbor dogs peeing on our front yard, I would be very unhappy. Honestly though, I am not sure that this would be different with other grasses. They all hate dog/cat pee.

Mike

cboothe – posted 29 July 2003 08:15

Thanks for the quick reply! I’m in Deland, FL (just west of Daytona Beach) so sounds like I may be doing some extra mowing (no worse than St. Augustine though) as we have been getting alot of rain this year. Everything you have described makes it sound like a winner to me. That price is definitely great news. I’ve seen quotes for some Zoysias as high as $200 per pallet. I’m hoping the density of this grass will give me an extra edge over my dollar weed.

Dchall_San_Antonio – posted 30 July 2003 08:21

I seem to have fixed my dog pee areas with table sugar and water. I scatter a handful of sugar on each spot and water it in. In about 3 weeks it’s bright green again.

Dog urine has a lot of urea in it. Urea is an organic fertilizer that is as hot as it can get. The problem is that extra nitrogen throws off the carbon/nitrogen balance. By adding sugar, you can rebalance the ratio and neutralize the situation. The sugar stimulates the rapid growth of soil microbes that can absorb the urea and convert it to humic acids for release later.

redbird – posted 30 July 2003 11:45

Q for Dchall:Does this work on the brown patches that you discover – or do you have to catch the dog “in the act” and apply the sugar immediately? Also – three weeks is about how long it takes my grass to send up green growth in the area. Does this really speed up recovery?

Mike

Mike

Dchall_San_Antonio – posted 31 July 2003 10:48

redbird,If you catch the dog in the act, then just spray the area with water to dilute the urea. No sugar needed. The sugar is for the yellow spots. If you have brown spots, you might have a fungus there. That’s different.

If you’re already getting regrowth in 3 weeks, the sugar will not speed it up (I don’t think). Try it in one spot and see what happens.

I will not say that you cannot over apply sugar, because you can. If you over apply it, it will throw the carbon/nitrogen balance off the other way and you will get a sudden halt to the release of nitrogen to the plants. The amount of sugar required to do this differs depending on your current carbon/nitrogen balance and the life in your soil.

Normally the microbes get sugar from the roots of the plants. When they get more sugar, they reproduce more microbes. You would be artificially inducing the reproduction by adding sugar. Does this help or muddy it up?

redbird – posted 31 July 2003 11:01

Thanks, Dchall – I’ll try it out!Mike

perryrip – posted 09 December 2005 13:38

Redbird,

Can you recommend any sod sources for approx. 40 pallets of centipede or bermuda to be laid in McIntosh County next summer? I’m looking for reasonable sources, and a lot of what I’ve been quoted is high. I’m laying the sod myself. You are in that area I gather from your comments?

Th***********@nu****.org

perryrip

devdally – posted 29 April 2010 16:35

quote:Originally posted by Dchall_San_Antonio:I seem to have fixed my dog pee areas with table sugar and water. I scatter a handful of sugar on each spot and water it in. In about 3 weeks it’s bright green again.

Dog urine has a lot of urea in it. Urea is an organic fertilizer that is as hot as it can get. The problem is that extra nitrogen throws off the carbon/nitrogen balance. By adding sugar, you can rebalance the ratio and neutralize the situation. The sugar stimulates the rapid growth of soil microbes that can absorb the urea and convert it to humic acids for release later.

Had I known this before, would’ve saved on expenses for landscape contractor in Long Beach

[This message has been edited by devdally (edited 29 April 2010).]