Sodly Satisfying

With neighbors mowing and the slightly sweet smell of fresh-cut grass floating in the breeze, there’s no question that Spring has arrived. But if you don’t have anything to mow yet, it may leave you feeling left out. Relax; it happens to a lot of yards. Sometimes we lose grass, or perhaps you’re in a situation where you’ve never had it. The solution to creating or rebuilding your lawn is the same - Sod Installation. But like all things landscaping and most things in life, it’s simpler to say than do. So we will explain the ins and outs of sodding your Hammond landscape from farm to property. Yep, People Farm Grass It may seem odd when you look around your neighborhood and every other residential area or business district and see a uniform buffer of grass between the buildings and the street that, despite its seeming omnipresence, there are farmers who devote their land and time to growing more grass. But, unfortunately, grass doesn’t naturally appear just where you need it! And just as we need to work to keep it neat and healthy, someone needs to work to grow it in the first place. Sod farmers do that job! And the work begins before the grass starts growing. They start the work by readying the land for their grass with fertilizer. Why So Long? They then care for it with careful watering, often through drip irrigation systems and feeding. And the grass isn‘t like a crop of summer tomatoes. While impatient for your tomatoes to ripen, you snatch off a green one or two to fry two months in; sod farmers must wait 18 months to two years for their crop to reach harvest time! Sod must develop robust overlapping root systems before it’s time to harvest it. These root systems keep the grass together in sheets when they are cut from the ground. Harvesting When it’s time to harvest the sod, so farmers use a machine called, appropriately enough, a sod harvester. The harvester cuts the sod in strips and several inches of dirt below it. You’ve probably seen sod like this at some point in a hardware store. Before they harvest it, farmers water it well so it can survive the transport. They typically harvest early in the morning, and it’s picked up within hours of harvesting. So the sooner you lay the sod after it’s removed, the better its chance of survival. Meanwhile, At A Home Near You… With the years of care, farmers put into their sod; you don’t want to blow it! So here’s how you (or your friendly professional landscaper) prepare for sod installation Prepping the Ground If you have something else growing where you want your new sod, we’ll start by removing that. We’ll also need the ground conducive to growing sod with the proper nutrient balance. For that, we’ll use fertilizer or other soil amendments. We’ll also level the ground for sod installation as flatly as possible. Water! Just as the farmers from earlier soaked their ground before cutting strips of sod, we must soak your ground where the new sod will be laid. We want the grass to have the best chance of survival, so having water immediately available for the roots is crucial! Sod Installation The first step of sod installation is getting it fresh! It’s impossible to overstate the importance of freshness. Ideally, we’ll lay the sod mere hours after picking it up in the morning. Once we arrive at your property, we will lay the sod in strips on your soon-to-be lawn. Like carpeting, we must perfectly line up the sod as we place it. If there are any anomalies, we’ll fill them in. Then we water yet again. After Care Here’s where you come in. The farmer has done his part, and Year Round has done ours. Now it’s your turn. You have two jobs now:

1. Water, water, water.
2. Don’t mess it up!