From Bare to Beautiful: A Guide to Instant Lawns with Sod

How the installation of sod is changing landscapes everywhere

What is Sod? Simply, sod is grass that’s already grown. It's like rolling out a green carpet, but it’s actually a lawn, and you can walk on it the same day. Sod comes from our agricultural industry. It’s grown under controlled conditions, is harvested precisely and correctly, and delivered promptly to your street, to be professionally installed by your landscaping company. 

Can you do it yourself? You certainly can…provided you do the same kind of soil preparation, lay it quickly (it’s heavy, and there’s often a LOT of it!), and you’ll likely not get as good a price at the big box stores as your landscaper gets from his wholesale sources. That said, it’s a great DIY project for a very small area. For a medium or large area, we recommend that you meet with a landscape company like us!

When Would You Use Sod? Sod is often one of the very last items to be installed once the building or remodeling project is completed. Construction can be very hard on the existing landscaping of a home. For instance, swimming pools, outdoor structures and their hardscaping, pool houses, and so on, require a huge quantity of materials to be moved from the street to the backyard. Whether that be done with tractors or wheelbarrows, your lawn can take a beating. 

While a good lawn can almost always be brought back to a healthy status once the project is over, it does take time, along with energy and patience. Patience? Yes, because your family has already invested in the project and you are expecting it to look beautiful, which it will, once the landscaping works its magic on your yard. Sod helps to expedite that process and allow you to fully enjoy your new project much more quickly. 

Main Benefits of Sod: Everyone appreciates the idea of an instant lawn, largely because it completes things. If we can steal a line of movie dialogue: as Jerry McGuire said to his love interest, “You complete me!” Completion is always great for a project, isn’t it? Also, in a practical sense, it’s also good for the environment to protect sensitive areas from rain and wind.

What Laying Sod Looks Like (in fast motion). Josh Landscape Co crew members laying sod for a residential client.

The Importance of Immediate Beauty: Creating an 'Instant Lawn'

Let’s talk about how having a beautiful, usable, and functioning lawn in no time at all delivers that ‘instant gratification’ that many of us crave. 

a. What's an 'Instant Lawn'? Sod gives you a lawn instantly instead of waiting for the grass seeds to grow and then turn into one. It’s just that simple. And while it has to be handled carefully and installed properly to ensure a beautiful and enduring outdoor carpet for your family, it actually arrives with a couple of inches of dirt, fully enmeshed with healthy roots from the grass, and enough nutrients to sustain its life as it settles into its new home. 

b. Why Does it Look Good? Picture your completed backyard landscaping. It might have several focal points, such as a pool over here, a structure of some kind over there, and a deck or patio somewhere else. What frequently ties them all together? A carpet of grass: thick, lush, and resilient; nothing does it better, or looks more natural. It is the finishing touch. It definitely completes things.

c. Growing Grass vs. Sod: To be fair, you do have an option of sowing your own seeds and creating your backyard lawn, and many people like the satisfaction of doing just that. However, in the present day, with the expectation of people to receive instant gratification, waiting several weeks for the lawn to mature can almost be excruciating. 

Don’t forget, while the seeds are germinating, taking root, and growing, you probably shouldn't walk on it, let the kids play on it, or the dogs “do their thing” on it! All of that takes a little bit of the shine off of your newly-completed project, so you can’t fully, truly enjoy it for a while. Seems a shame, doesn’t it?

By comparison--and it’s obvious—sod is ready to go. You could party on it tonight! It’s good to go…and you are not worn out from your labors.

Real-Life Examples from our clients:

A Great Big Example: As a testimonial to the durability of sod, realize that all NFL football clubs are required to submit a ‘resodding plan’ to the League, prior to the start of the season, because nearly all grass fields require re-sodding at least one time during the season, or after a motorcycle road race, or a rock concert! You get the idea. That’s how good sod is. It is durable and dependable, able to overcome the ravages of both monster trucks and monster linebackers—and the gremlin of time.

Time-Saving Benefits—Specially Designed for Those Who Hate to Wait

We can talk about the quick transformation of our backyard spaces, and the benefits of using sod over grass, but the grass still has to grow, doesn’t it? How does that happen?

a. Growing Grass Takes Time. A healthy lawn takes several weeks of growing before it can be used. Months, actually. So, we have a choice: we can either grow it ourselves in our backyards or have it grown professionally for us, in agricultural spaces, under ideal conditions, harvested at exactly the right time. 

b. Less Work with Sod: It gets installed more quickly, with less effort, and is less likely to be infested with any weed seeds during the growing process. Also…it’s much less likely to have birds or other pests take away the seeds…as the seeds have already sprouted. 

c. Why Sod Saves Time: With an average-sized yard, sod installation is done in a day, while growing grass seeds (including hydroseeding) takes several weeks, at least. Truth be told, commercial sod farms will take from 10 months to two years to cultivate turf before it is harvested. That’s why sod is so durable, and so quickly. 

Energy Efficiency and Environmental Considerations

a. A Lower Water Bill: At least in the short run, your water usage will be lower with sod than with growing seeds to maturity. Sod readily absorbs water much more efficiently than seed. Since there is less waste of water, it can be considered good for the environment. 

b. Side Benefit: A sodded area is much more successful at preventing the erosion of dirt than a lawn area early in its growth phase.

c. Different Places, Different Sod: All sod is not created equal. Likewise, some varieties are more suited to certain tasks and weather conditions, and soil than others. For instance, Kentucky blue grass might grow very well on the East Coast, but be very difficult to maintain on the West. Your landscape architect/designer/contractor or your county agricultural agent can advise you on what works best.

d. Expert Tips: When you can get advice from professionals on what sod works best in your area, at least consider it. Your professional may suggest getting a soil test, which is an analysis of what elements currently exist in your soil, and what needs to be added to them to make them suitable for sod. Sometimes, the soil test might suggest the removal of bad soils (such as clay, for example), and importing good topsoil in its place. 

These things come at a cost, of course, but—when indicated and necessary--they are always less expensive to do one time, prior to the placement of any type of turf. Those types of errors can easily cost two to three times what it should when done properly.

Additional Benefits and Considerations

Making Your Home More Valuable: Real estate value is often described as ‘location, location, location’. True enough. But don’t discount ‘curb appeal’ either. The location makes your home’s neighborhood worth a certain amount, but the curb appeal of your own home is what helps determine its market value.

Getting Creative with Your Yard: Want to design your yard in cool and creative ways, maybe have grass on a steep slope, or even on a rooftop? (Yes, it happens!) Then sod should be on your “to-do” list. 

Challenges and Solutions: As professional landscape architects and contractors, over the years we’ve taken advantage of the unique capabilities of sod, and we’re here to help you talk through your own challenges and offer our solutions. 

Conclusion:

The grass is greener with sod, which should be your next step to a gorgeous lawn! Let’s go through it. It’s simple: sod gives an instant lawn, saves time, and avoids mistakes. As an aid to quickly covering vulnerable soils, sod can actually help the environment. 

JOSH Landscape has specialized crews and equipment for the installation of sod. It is labor intensive so remember that the JOSH Landscape company is here to help walk you through your decisions. Questions? Call or email our design department. 585-582-1212 or office@joshlandscape.com. Simple as that!