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I guess once the lawn is well established you might be able to get away with decreased watering but I would be afraid not to water new sod.
When can I stop watering?
I will be at three weeks tomorrow. I have switched from light watering a few times daily to a longer/deeper watering every 2-3 days depending on if I get any help from Mother Nature.
If you can pull up corners (i.e. the roots have not grown down into the ground to hold the sod in place) it is too early to move away from daily watering. Mine has knitted down pretty much completely.
One more thing-our clay soil can't really absorb all that much water at one time. You don't want to water to the point that you are creating any runoff. Better to water for 15 minutes, wait for it to soak in, and go back and water some more.
Once you have an established Bermuda lawn it will need no more than an inch of water per week during the growing season. A rain gauge is your friend-some people use cat food or tuna cans placed around the lawn to measure rainfall or how much water their sprinklers are actually putting down. If possible, that one inch of water should go down in a single watering-frequent light watering on an established lawn encourages fungus and or bugs.
Sod itself runs around $200 per pallet at retail (covering 450-500 SF) depending on what kind of grass you buy. Labor to properly install it can vary depending on how much prep work is required.
What kind of grass is there already (if any)? They will typically spray to kill anything that is alive on the area to be sodded-sometimes it takes two treatments.
Is the soil ready or do amendments need to be brought in? It is a waste of time to throw sod down on top of hard compacted clay full of weeds.
What is the grading like? My backyard needed considerable drainage work including routing downspouts into pipes laid under the new sod to carry water away from my house and to the common area behind my fence. They dug trenches to run the pipe. Then they brought fresh topsoil in and graded the entire area before laying the sod.
As a general rule of thumb, unless you go with a pricier grass I would figure no more than $1 per square foot for sod and quality basic installation. We paid less than that for our front yard but there were other factors im place-the general economy was lousy, and we contracted with our next door neighbors to have both front yards done at the same time-it was essentially one job and they got a break on sod cost buying a full truckload.
Thank you...that's lots of good info.... We have a large back yard....new build..... approximately 100' X 80' of area...it is all hard packed red clay....no weeds...just bare.
Is this an ok time of year to lay bermuda sod? If I water for 3 weeks starting now, it'll take?
It'll most likely take, but it is definitely later than I would prefer.
The best time is late spring into summer. My front yard went down mid-July and other than having to keep it watered it was pretty much ideal. Bermuda likes warm soil temperatures.
If it were my 8,000 square foot backyard I would throw down some ryegrass seed to get thru the winter and plan to sod next year.
Just visited Super Sod the other day at the Farmers Market. Couldn't decide whether we should just do Fescue or Bermuda (sun issue in our backyard). It was recommended to us to do Fescue this time of year and wait until spring for Bermuda. Apparently they had lots of folks who experienced winter damage to their Bermuda sod that was placed last Fall. Pallets of Fescue were $219 and Bermuda was $299.
Just visited Super Sod the other day at the Farmers Market. Couldn't decide whether we should just do Fescue or Bermuda (sun issue in our backyard). It was recommended to us to do Fescue this time of year and wait until spring for Bermuda. Apparently they had lots of folks who experienced winter damage to their Bermuda sod that was placed last Fall. Pallets of Fescue were $219 and Bermuda was $299.
If your home's exposure and shade levels support maintaining Fescue, great. Your yearly expense will be higher (overseeding,aerating, water) but you will have green grass 12 months of the year.
Our house was sodded with Fescue when we bought it in late fall of 2007. The sod went down November
15th and looked great until late the following spring when it became clear that NO amount of water could change the exposure to sun that the front yard got. The front yard died off pretty much completely that first summer-the back yard lasted another year.
Our prior house had Bermuda and irrigation, but I hardly ever had to use the irrigation other than to water in fertilizer. I knew I wouldn't need irrigation to keep the Bermuda alive, and I knew that Eastern exposure and no trees in the front yard of the new house would be fine for Bermuda. It was a really easy decision.
We used a new strain of Bermuda called TifGrand for the backyard. It supposedly can thrive on 4-5 hours of sun per day where Tifway 419 needs full sun (8+ hours). It was more expensive by about 15 cents per square foot than 419. The backyard gets decent sun but I only wanted to do this once so we will see how the TifGrand does. So far so good.
Each choice has tradeoffs. I don't love that my Bermuda invades my planting beds-I have to stay on top of that. I don't mind the look of dormant Bermuda although some do. I would never overseed to make my lawn green in winter.
I switched lawn care companies this season. I went with a very large national company that everyone is familiar with. I was satisfied with my previous lawn care guy but he charged a bit more than I want to pay now that I am retired.
Anyway two problems this season. The lawn has been very slow to green up 100%. It doesn't look bad but it looked better the past two seasons. The second problem is much more troublesome. Mid May I noticed a new type of weed growing. Grows really fast straight stalk V shaped top. Scotts told me it was poa nearly impossible to kill but it would die off when we started to get more consistent heat. Nearly two months and if anything there is more now than ever.
Called my previous service company and the nice young lady told me quite a few lawns have this weed due to the strange weather last Winter and this Spring. I find myself cutting the lawn to get the weeds down long before the lawn itself needs a cut.
Anyone else having a problem with their lawn greening and does anyone see an abundance of this weed?
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