newly sodded lawn

[Shelli]

Hi everyone:

I'm hoping someone here can help with a little problem we have encountered with our new sod..firstly, our sod was laid over two days, we did not start watering until the day after...I was told after the fact that it should have been done within two hours of it being laid...new house, new sod, never had any experience so we just started watering in the evening like you would with grass. Well of course my entire lawn, the next door neighbours, pretty much the entire street with exception of one house all have nice yellow lawns with green patches...the day it was laid it appeared a grey and blue/green like colour...not a rich kelly green like I was expecting..anyway, after about the 4th day of it being laid I pointed out to the landscapers that the lawn looks like crap, and what should we be doing...I was only told to keep watering it...well we have had water on it for days now (8 hours yesterday)and it looks just terrible...you can't step on it because you will sink and in order to get the sprinkler in the middle of the lawn, we have no choice, so now the sod really looks like crap because it has moved and is a lovely flourecent yellow with little bits of green popping up here and there....does anyone have an opinion of what went wrong....did in fact not watering it within 2 hours cause the sod to die so to speak..I could see if in fact we were the only ones with trouble, but the whole street looks terrible and if it wasn't watered enough how is the green patchy areas living....and lastly, i threw some seeds down on top, hoping this will help, (it had no chemicals)... is there any other advice on how I can "bring back" or save this mess, or should I be bringing in another expert to test the soil that was used underneath...was it possible that sub quality sod was used and I should be demanding new sod of higher quality or was it indeed our fault for not watering within 2 hours...thank you in advance for any help or suggestions you expert gardeners :-) may have. Oh, just so you know, it was laid a week ago today...it went that quickly. (the weather was cloudy on the two days it was laid...mostly sunny for the next 4 days, cloudy yesterday and it is raining here today in southern Ontario, Canada.)

Sincerely,

Shelli to email me use [e-mail] ( above one doesn't work )

[Vox Humana]

What does the developer (builder, general contactor, ....) have to say?

[Tono]

I've seen many newly sodded lawns go brown and look completely dead then come back to life. The watering should have been asap, but it should survive if you don't drown it. :-) You don't want a mud bath out there, just keep it moist and don't miss a day especially if it is going to be sunny and hot. Those little bits of green here and there will hopefully take over.

Where you there when the sod was laid? Did they use a roller so it is making firm contact with the soil beneath?

Tono (moving to the woods to get away from all this boring, high maintenance grass stuff)

[Snooze]

Newly laid sod needs frequent watering, but you don't want to create a swimming pool. Perhaps 10 minutes every day for the first week or two, if you live in a dry hot climate, maybe 10 minutes in the morning, and 10 minutes in the afternoon, or early evening.

The roots are shallow, so you want to make sure the top quarter inch of soil is moist, like a squeezed sponge. Not watering after the first 2 hours probably didn't harm anything, sod on pallets for hours in the nursery, and does just fine. Ease back on the watering would be my first suggestion, give it a week or two, of just light but frequent watering.

Also in the future, consider breaking your posts up into paragraphs, it makes it much easier to read. People tend to skip over posts that are over 1 screen in length.

Snooze

[Shelli]

Hi and thank you for your responses.

The builder says just to keep watering it, in fact he called today to say thank you for taking their advice and keep the water going on it. Both the builder and landscaper have the same opinion of it not being watered ASAP and both have said "hopefully it's not too far gone to bring back".

We were not home when they sodded our lawn, but watched our neighbours being done and no rolling was done at all. (It would have been nice at that point for the landscaper to tell us to get the sprinkler out)

I did mention to our builder to include instructions to the homeowners and not assume that everyone has a clue...because we certainly didn't as we are not greenthumbers and have never dealt with sod in our life...live and learn I guess.

But, thanks for the advice so far, it is greatly appreciated.

Shelli