KB sod not filling in

[Dick Shenary]

Last summer I put down a 95% KB/5% Dwarf Fescue sod lawn. The lawn appears to be healthy; a dark deep green and lush growth.

I expected all of the seams to be invisible by now, and a couple of bare spots from dog urine to have repaired themselves. This isn't happening.

Approx. 10% of the seams are still discernable and the dog urine patches have yet to fill in.

Do these symptoms indicate a problem, or simply that my expectations are too high?

Northern California, a mix of Sunset zones 7,8,&9, soil tested and amended prior to the sod, no compacting.

[Steveo]

Have you had decent rainfall there? Was the soil prepared a least a little before the sod was laid?

[Dick Shenary]

Yes and yes. In fact we had over our normal rainfall, and we worked hard to perfect the soil beforehand.

[Steveo]

Did the sod look good and healthy when it arrived? I'm only guessing here, do you have a pic? (don't post it to this group)

[Kyle Boatright]

I'm not familiar with dwarf fescue, but tall fescue doesn't self repair. It propagates by seed, not rhyzome or stolon. The only way to fill in bare spots in tall fescue is to overseed or patch with more sod.

[trader4]

Dwarf is the same in that regard as regular fescue. I was noticing the percentages you listed and am left wondering why this sod has fescue in it to begin with. With 95% KB, it would seem to me that it would be pointless to have 5% dwarf fescue, as it would be so overwhelmed by the KB that it really wouldn't be doing much at all. Most mixes are done to give a more balanced lawn that can then survive and look half way decent when affected by diseases that hit one species, but not the other.

As regarding the sod filling in, did you do a good fall fertilization? Normally, I'd wait to put fertilizer down until its time to do the pre-emergent crabgrass control at the same time, however with a new lawn, I would do an early spring fertilization too, probably with a starter fertilizer, as that is formulated to promote more root growth, rather than quick greening with just nitrogen.