Questions about plugging zoysia

one wolf – posted 30 March 2010 10:03

Hello grass lovers

I live in Raleigh NC on a mostly full-sun acre. The back yard is princess 77 bermuda – I’m very happy with it now but was not happy with the effort required to get it going two years ago. Our yard has zillions of rocks ranging in size from pebbles to ham-sized mini-boulders so turning 4″ of soil is simply not reasonable – we were hauling off rocks for days. So the back yard is P77 bermuda now and it’s fine but I won’t be seeding the front yard. I also don’t like all the nitrogen my bermuda requires – $200 of fertilizer every year is steep, and that’s just the back yard. The front yard is twice as big.

The front yard is 15,000 square feet. I can’t afford the thousands of dollars it would cost to sod. What I can afford is plugs, and I am not afraid of manual labor. I want zoysia – this much I know.

On plugging – my thought is to buy a pallet of zoysia sod and then cut it into 3″x3″ plugs myself. I have a radial arm saw with a steel cut-off blade that will make quick work of cutting big sod squares into small ones. So assuming that effort of cutting sod into plugs is a nominal effort – how many hours am I looking at realistically to plug 500 ft2 (1 pallet) of plugs? I figure it’s 500 x 4 x 4 = 8,000 plugs. Sounds very daunting. Again I’m not afraid of work but I do worry about the pallet of grass drying out before I can finish if it takes me 3 weeks.

Any thoughts/guidance/suggestions on this overall approach?

Next question is what type of Zoysia. I’m leaning toward El Toro due to the fast spreading characteristic mostly, but I also want a good lawn. I have found it very difficult to compare varieties online because every website espews the value of the variety they sell. They all kind of say the opposite things. One site says emerald is the new el toro, another says el toro is the new meyer. Lots of competing information. But my local ag folks say go with El Toro for speed of growth reasons considering I’m trying to cover 15,000 square feet with plugs, and that’s hard to argue.

Thoughts on this choice – El Toro? I assume once it fills in it is nice and dense and chokes out as well as any other zoysia? Or at least close enough considering the spread speed factor?

Thanks in advance for any thoughts on all this.

ken4255 – posted 31 March 2010 11:29

I have tried plugging Jamur, which is supposed to spread about as fast as El Toro (but with a finer texture similar to Meyer). I bought a few squares of Jamur and I just set them on some bare areas, watering as needed, until they took root. Then I used a bulb planter to cut plugs out of the sod and transplant them somewhere else. I have read you should plant the plugs six inches apart — I have taken the lazy approach and planted maybe three feet apart. Gradually things are filling in. When I have time I transplant more plugs into bare areas. In another area, I just laid Meyer zoysia right on top of some existing fescue, and it took root with no problem, however you will have some grass growing between the seams. I would kill everything first before you lay the new sod down, and also kill the existing grass in the area that you plant plugs. It is not easy to kill fescue in Zoysia, and I hear it is even tougher to kill bermuda in Zoysia.

saltcedar – posted 01 May 2010 05:53

Frankly there’s no way to know which variety is right for your area unless you can find it already growing locally. Meyer and Emerald are both old varieties that have been supplanted. El Toro, JaMar Empire, and Palisades represent the new fast spreading wide bladed types that can be cut with a rotary mower. Though I’d read how Empire is terrific in Florida landscapes when I grow it here in Texas it struggles. Instead I grow El Toro which has spread as far as 3ft. in a month in hot damp weather in Spring. It also grows well in the shade of my Live Oak! So bottom line is try a tray or two of plugs of each variety and see which does well in your climate and soil.