Sod Care

Maybe you're wanting to replace your sod but don't know where to start?

Join Pablo, one of our landscape experts as he answers our questions on soil prep, watering, different types of sod and much more. Glad you're here, let's get started. 

https://youtu.be/bQCObBXCRW4https://yardstopgardencenter.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome back to our 18th episode on the Arsenal Podcast guys. Thanks for tuning in today. Our topic is going to be about sod, and our guest speaker is Pablo. Pablo has been on the podcast, I think it was episode two that we had used. Episode two or three, and we talked about how to care for your plants and prep them for freeze. And today we're going to be talking about how to care for sod and all the questions that come with that. So welcome back, Pablo, and shall we get started?

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for having me back.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

Yeah, thanks for coming back. Just to start off, would you give us a little bit of history from how you got your knowledge on sod to tie into it?

SPEAKER_00 0:37

So I spent about 28 years as a firefighter paramedic, but on my days off, I was in the green industry. So for about 25 years, well 27 total now. Um I've been in the green industry and I started my my uh business doing lawn care and lawn maintenance. So I spent most of that time uh taking care of people's uh lawn and making sure that they were maintained and uh giving them advice on how to take care of them.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

Cool. Um, so I do have a list of questions to ask you today, but some will be off topic, and I'm sure that's fine. For someone who's new to wanting to redo their yard, how do they know what kind of sod they would need?

SPEAKER_00 1:21

It's very it depends on a lot of factors. Uh one, uh what your budget is, what you're what you're able to spend on replacing your sod. Uh, it also has to do with uh how much of that sod needs to be replaced. Not sometimes your entire yard doesn't need to be replaced, just sections of that yard need to be replaced because it's either been caught, you know, had issues with disease or lack of watering or maybe not maintained correctly. Um, also could include uh what your HOA requirements are. Some HOAs require you to only put in St. Augustine, you can't put any other varieties, or some some neighborhoods only tell you that you can only put in Zoija. Uh, it just depends on what the HOA um requirements are, and also what your budget is on a monthly basis on the care for that sod, right? So St. Augustine is probably one of the most expensive lawns to maintain and take care of because it requires uh different types of chemicals applied throughout the year, where Bahia is a little less uh maintenance uh chemically, chemically or chemical maintenance requirements. So it's a little bit more cost effective throughout the year. So though those are some factors that can determine what type of sod you're gonna use.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Okay, that makes sense. And I didn't know that about HOAs. I mean, I'm assuming they just don't have a lot of trees because St. Augustine is full sun sod, right?

SPEAKER_00 2:50

Not necessarily. Um, some municipalities and counties have a certain amount of trees that have to go back into the yard when you're building new construction. They'll like I believe the city of Eustace requires you to put in four shade trees when you build a home. Uh, but there are varieties of St. Augustine that are shade tolerant. So we can still put that in. Uh, and there's a lot of factors that play into the whole shade thing uh when you're doing specially new construction. So uh the adaptability of that sod to grow as the tree is growing, um, it will adapt to that shade as the as they both grow together, you know, over time. So there are some factors that play into that.

SPEAKER_01 3:31

Okay. So what sod is more for sun and and which type is more for shade, would you say?

SPEAKER_00 3:37

So St. Augustine, believe it or not, is going to be the best sod to use in the shade. Um, when someone says shade tolerant, um, it usually means that the sod does better in the shade, but with it still has to have light. It still has to have sun. So it still has to have about four to six hours of direct sunlight at some point. So there's no such thing as completely shade tolerant grass that can survive in 100% shade all day.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:13

So anybody that comes out and says to you, hey, you know, I want to sell you this sod because it'll it's gonna do great underneath this oak tree that gets zero sunlight all day, chances are it's not gonna do very well. If it, if, if you have St. Augustine, a variety of St. Augustine that's shade tolerant, that you uh are able to put underneath that tree, maybe even have someone come out, thin that tree out, get some sunlight in there, it'll do, it'll do well. Um, some of the varieties of St. Augustine that do well in the shade are gonna be like Pro Vista or Bitter Blue. Uh ProVista is a new variety that's come out that uh we we sell here at the yard stop that has done very well um for us. Uh along with the fact that it's a little bit better uh shade tolerant than other St. Augustine varieties, uh, it also has uh the ability to have herbicide applied to it. And we can get into that here in a minute. But um as long as you're not using a product like Roundup on the sod, there are some herbicides that you can apply to Pro Vista for weed control that other sods don't allow you to do. So um Pro Vista is definitely one of the options. Uh bitter blue is another one. Uh the citra blue, I believe, is another another option that you can use.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

So those are kind of the types of sod.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

Well, you've got you've got several different types. You've got bahia. Bahá is basically a pasture grass. It's been grown out in a cow pasture. Uh, very, very good uh drought tolerant sod.

SPEAKER_01 5:49

Um high maintenance.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

Not high maintenance with chemicals. Um matter of fact, I built my home a couple years back, and you know, I have the option of any sod that I'd like to get my hands on, and I I decided to go with Bahia. Um, I've got, and I can show you, I've got some pictures uh here that we're gonna we're gonna show our audience of what Bahia looks like if it's taken care of correctly. And I'll put my my yard of Bahá sod against some of the St. Augustine yards out there, and it really comes down to knowing how to take care of it and what it needs uh on a weekly basis. And it's just one of those sods that doesn't require a lot of chemical treatment. Um, it's very, very tolerable to different types of insects. And and and when I say insects, sod insects like sod webworms, chinch bugs, it's a little bit more resilient than St. Augustine is. Um and it doesn't require you for you to treat it every month. So it's a very affordable lawn. And as long as all the things are in place for it to be taken care of correctly, it's it could be absolutely just as pretty as St. Augustine.

SPEAKER_01 6:57

So would you say that prepping, pre-prepping before you lay sod is crucial to how it's the importance of it growing well?

SPEAKER_00 7:05

Yeah, I think so. Uh especially here in Florida. So we have a very sandy, uh low nutrient soil in Florida. Right. And uh doing a soil amendment prior to um it putting in new sod is extremely important. And I think one way, one you know, one of the important factors that you want to do is you want to make sure that you prep it in in the sense that you remove any existing vegetation that's there, have it taken out, or have it removed, or have some herbicide treatments put in it so it kills whatever's there. Come in, uh remove all that dead vegetation, you know, regrade your your yard to make sure that you have the proper drainage in your yard that you need. And then you can do a soil amendment. For example, we carry the command surf, which is a very uh high-end compost uh uh, and I think you had Mark on the podcast talking about command. Uh, you can do a soil amendment on that prior to putting your sod down. Uh it that that product is incredible as far as nutrients and and and water retainage, which is important um for your for your any kind of sod that you put down. And um also with a command turf, um, you can also do a top dressing, which I think that uh Mark also spoke on that, which is you come in and and you spread the command on top of your existing sod and it adds uh the values of nutrients and water retention to your sod.

SPEAKER_01 8:38

So prep that would that would be your first step. So prepping your prepping your sand and then laying your sod. And then what would come next? I'm assuming watering.

SPEAKER_00 8:50

Yeah, so so we recommend uh watering in the early mornings. Uh like for example, I use my yard. Um I start watering my yard around 6 a.m. Uh I run my zones in the summertime, anywhere from 45 minutes to 60 minutes for rotors, uh, 20 minutes or so for my plant beds. I try to conserve as much water on my plant beds because they don't need as much water as the sod does. So I'll try to conserve as much water as I can in my plant beds and put it on my rotor zones or my sod zones. So uh you want to do early mornings. You don't want to do twice a day, like morning and night. The reason why is if you water at nighttime in the evening, that water just sits there on the lawn all night long, which encourages fungus growth. So I always tell folks water in the morning, allow the sod to obtain what it needs, and then by lunchtime it's gonna absorb what it doesn't need and get that water off the turf.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

Okay. And then um, what about long-term watering?

SPEAKER_00 9:50

Long-term watering. Well, you know, when you when we first install the new sod, you you want to water every day. And you know, again, it's it's a new sod, you're retransplanting it. So you want to give encourage new growth. So you want to water every day. Uh, once that sod takes and the roots have kind of taken, you can go back to following your uh your neighborhood watering restrictions, or you if you want to follow the um St.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

John's Water District St.

SPEAKER_00 10:15

John's Water District uh recommendations, which is uh twice a week. And again, for if you're St. Augustine Bahá, 45 minutes to an hour on the rotors is plenty twice a week. That's more than enough water. Right. And for example, my Bahia, and again, you'll see the pictures. Uh on my Bahá, I only water the recommended uh two days a week, and it and it does great. Uh, but there's other things that I've implemented that help with that water retention. And um with St. Augustine, Bahia, I don't care what you put down, you have to to water, uh, but you don't want to overwater. Overwatering can also lead to other issues like fungus and and and things like that. So uh the there's some key key tips or rules that you want to remember. Um, you you know you want to look at your sod. Uh, you want to make sure, like for example, with St. Augustine, if your blades are folded in half, uh, that's an indicator that that sod is thirsty and it needs some water. Um, you can also uh check the ground. You know, if the ground is extremely dry and there's just no moisture in the soil, then it's probably time to get some water on it. Um, you know, uh another thing that you want to look at when it comes to watering is if the ground is saturated, like you step on it and it's real mushy and soft and it's just saturated with water, that's way too much water. You can also look for signs like dollar weed. If you have an abundance of dollar weed or weeds growing in your lawn, it's probably getting overwatered. So overwatering is just as important as underwatering. And not every time that your lawn looks bad, it's a water issue. That's a common mistake that people make. They look at something, they're like, Oh, I got a spot that's starting to come up there, it's brown, um, or it's starting starting to turn colors, and you know, they automatically go to, oh, I need to increase my water across the whole yard.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

Because brown eat doesn't always equal dry and dead, it equals is it fungus?

SPEAKER_00 12:19

It very sometimes it can be a fungus issue. Uh sometimes it could be, you know, uh a lawn insect that gets in there. Um, you just kind of need to find out what's happening first before you start making any adjustments and then take a look at the rest of the lawn.

unknown 12:34

Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

How does the rest of the lawn look? If the rest of the yard is flourishing and it looks great, but you've got one small spot that's starting to come out, yeah, you need to look at it a little bit closer and find out why is that happening. Because if it's a systemic problem across the lawn, you're gonna start seeing it in other areas. But you want to get ahead of it quickly. You know, you don't want to wait and procrastinate and not take care of it because if it is a fungus or uh an insect, you know, like sod webworms or ching bugs or anything like that, the sooner you take care of it, the faster you're gonna recover. If you wait and procrastinate and put it off, um, those issues can spread extremely quickly and um fast. So the the key thing to remember when you put in like St. Augustine, for example, again, we talked about it a little bit earlier about how expensive it is chemical-wise. You need to treat it within the first seven to ten days of putting it down with a fungicide, insecticide. You don't want to put uh fertilizer on it immediately. So, first seven to ten days, treat it with a fungicide, treat it with an insecticide, let those roots take hold, and then after, you know, maybe after the first two to three weeks, right? You can apply uh some fertilizer.

SPEAKER_01 13:50

So your your sod will take root after a couple weeks.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

Yeah, as long as it's getting water, as long as it's you know, it's it's the prep work was done, um, it'll it should take within a few weeks.

SPEAKER_01 14:01

Right. And you want to treat it before the bugs actually have a chance to get to it. You don't have to wait for it to have a problem with treatment.

SPEAKER_00 14:08

No, you especially St. Augustine. Uh 100% you want to treat it within the first seven to ten days. You can you can do it yourself. We do have some products that we offer here at the yard stop that you can come by and take care of it yourself. Right. We recommend that you hire a professional company to come in and and take care of it. And with St. Augustine, get them on a on like a quarterly program where they come in and they do the fertilization, they'll come in and do the fungicide and insecticide when it needs it. They'll also do a pre and post-emergent for the weeds, and they'll set you up on a program to take care of it. And there's a lot of great companies out there that'll do that. Just do your research, do some homework, you know, look at reviews, find out who's doing the best work, and that's who you want to call in and hire to do it.

SPEAKER_01 14:53

So we've gone through prep, laying aside, the fungicide, insecticide, watering. And then can you tell us about mowing? When should you start your first mowing? How tall do you mow it?

SPEAKER_00 15:06

So, you usually within the first seven to ten days, you can start mowing, and we encourage that because mowing uh your your new sod encourages root growth, which is what you want. You want it to take. And so we encourage you to start mowing it. A lot of folks worry about well, are the pieces gonna get sucked up into my lawn mower?

SPEAKER_01 15:24

Right.

SPEAKER_00 15:25

Uh it that can happen, but usually it doesn't happen. So we encourage that you mow. Uh, once it's established, I recommend, and again, going back to this picture of the bahia in my yard, uh, I mow my bahia at four and a half inches during the growing season. And I do that for a reason because I want there to be uh long blades, um, not short blades, because long blades encourage thicker, longer roots. And that's where sod gets its nutrients from. That's where it breaks down um the fertilizer that you apply, and that's where it absorbs water. The the grass blades themselves, that's where the grass breaks down sugar for energy for growth, and that's where it um that's the process of photosynthesis where that occurs in the in those cells that are in the in the blade. Um, so you want to make sure you mow it high. That's gonna encourage water retention. Um, it's gonna encourage stronger roots, it's gonna encourage uh protecting the sod with providing a little bit more uh from the heat elements of the Florida heat. And you also want to make sure that you have sharp blades.

SPEAKER_01 16:43

Um why is that?

SPEAKER_00 16:44

So two things. One, it uh it helps with the healing process of the blade. If there's sharp blades, also you'll get you won't see that gray appearance across your lawn. Uh because you that gray appearance that you're seeing, and you you'll see in the illustration here that I um I've got you're gonna see that if you have uh rag um rugged rugged little edges, you know, or rigid little yeah, you know, where it's not a nice like it looks torn, like torn grass. Yeah, it's not a clean cut. I've seen that difference. Yeah, so a sharp blade's gonna give you that clean cut. That'll make your yard look greener and more luscious. Whereas if it's got that torn look, and you can take a piece of your blade of grass and put it up next to a piece of paper and look at it, and you'll see where it looks torn. If you start to see that, you know that that's your blades are dull. So you want to have a sharp blade on your lawn mower when you mow. Um typically, uh, you know, I I change my blades out probably every four cuts, I'll put some fresh blades on there. Uh, and I'll also, you know, I can also tell when I'm mowing, you know, if most of the lawn is getting cut evenly. If I start to see that there's some longer pieces in the lawn, then I know it's time to change my blades. But uh mowing height is important. Um St. Augustine and Bahia, I personally recommend four inches minimum uh for those. The your Zoiza, you can go a little bit less, like maybe three inches. Um, but you want to stay, you know, within the four inches for the two, the other two.

SPEAKER_01 18:18

And is uh mowing pattern a thing?

SPEAKER_00 18:21

Yes. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 18:22

Can you explain a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_00 18:24

So you can create ruts going in the same direction every time, which eventually is going to cause your mowing depth to change because the more that your mower sinks into the lawn, the lower it's going to start cutting for you. And it also just puts ruts in your yard. So we recommend every week you change the pattern. You know, if you go right to left in your yard this week, then the next week, you know, go the other way. I I go four different directions every time that I mow to help prevent those ruts from happening.

SPEAKER_01 18:55

Do we have a little bit of time to cover artificial turf?

SPEAKER_00 18:57

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

Because I was curious, obviously, it's fake grass, but um it's still laid on actual soil.

SPEAKER_00 19:06

So yeah, so artificial turf is is becoming very popular. Uh, you have your golfers that want to have them for you know, having a little miniature putt-putt golf area in the back. We have a lot of customers that are purchasing it, even though they have pets, because we do have some pet-friendly turf. Um, it is laid on your regular uh ground soil, but there is a little bit more prep work that goes into it. Uh, we do use um uh like a fine that we put as a base. So we put a base in it uh that helps it with its texture, how how how uh tight the the the turf is uh in the area, and there there is a little bit of maintenance to it after you put it in. It's not entirely maintenance-free, but it is a lot less maintenance than mowing grass every week. Yeah, it's a lot of things. Obviously, you don't yeah, you you don't have to water it or cut it, but you do have to keep it clean. Uh, you do have to add some sand to it throughout the year to keep that turf tight. Right. So the there is a little bit of maintenance, but it's not quite as extensive as mowing your lawn every week. And there's some folks that replace their whole yard with it, you know. Um, it's it's it's one of those things that again goes back to your budget. It's it's a little a little expensive to put in, but some people look at it like hey, it's a one-time thing that I need to spend money to put it in, and then I save on the maintenance every month, I save on the chemicals. So, so there's some good positive benefits to it, and also you know, the fact that it's expensive. So it just depends on what your budget is. Uh, but it's a it's an option that's out there. Uh, we do do a lot of it, and um again, you know, depends on what your use is, what you're wanting it for, but we've done different types of projects with it, and they they really cook turns out really nice.

SPEAKER_01 20:52

Yeah, yeah. I've been out to several jobs that have artificial turf and they they look really good. Yeah, it's always fun.

SPEAKER_00 21:00

Yep, and we have we have designers and sales guys here that are ready to sit down with customers and kind of go over their project and see what better fits their budget for what they want to do.

SPEAKER_01 21:09

Yeah, awesome. Well, it's been great having you on the podcast, Paulo. Thanks for covering all the questions on SOD and anytime I enjoy coming on here. Yeah. I hope all of our listeners took something helpful away from the conversation. And guys, if you're interested in getting a SOD install, whether that's artificial turf or just St. Augustine or Bahia, we do SOD installs. You can go on our website, the R Stop Garden Center, and get a free quote. Just fill out the form, and one of our designers will contact you and we'll get you going from there. So thank you so much for tuning in to this episode. We'll see you guys later.