Care of a New Sod Lawn

12 years ago

Hi all,

I have a very small lawn in front of my Townhouse. It is about half shady half sunny. Approximately 3-4 weeks ago I dug up the whole lawn and installed sod. I have been watering it religiously (at least 4 hours per day) and it appears to be doing pretty well.

I have two questions on how to make sure the lawn stays nice.

1) As I said I've been watering it every day for several hours a day. How long do I need to keep up that over-saturation? Once I'm done with the over-saturation period how often should I water the lawn? Will the amount of watering needed change as the weather continues to grow colder?

2) I always hear about "fall feeding". I'm assuming, however, that any type of fertilization regiment will be damaging to the sod before it has a chance to establish itself. Is this true? Should I fertilize this fall? If not, should I fertilize next spring? If so, what type of fertilizer should I use?

The lawn finally looks really nice and I want to keep it that way, so I appreciate any advice you guys can give.

Thanks!

Aaron

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Comment (1)

Jesse
12 years ago
It's time to really back off the watering. How much you need to water is largely dependent on the weather. The warmer and drier it is, the more water your grass will transpire, and the more you need to water. When it cools off, it will need less water to stay green. However, the only time that kind of breaks down is when, like in the fall, you want to boost your grass some for recovery from the summer - then even though, it's transpiring less, you will still water a fair amount.

Go out and pull up on your sod. If it's rooted, it shouldn't be possible. I think you should probably work the lawn back to about an hour per week. Start by 1 hour per day, then every other day and so on.

When you laid the sod, did you put starter fertilizer? If not, you should apply it right away. And yes, in November timeframe, (before snow, but as it's basically done growing) you will apply fertilizer.
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