Sod installation, sod removal and new lawns

Ground that has had a house built on it is packed hard, and roots will not go into it. We break it up, pull out what the builder left under the topsoil, which is usually concrete chunks, gravel, sand and scrap, and bring in topsoil where there is not enough. Then the grade gets corrected, because builder grading is rough grading and it often runs flat or back toward the foundation. Final grade falls away from the house and off the walks, and it gets raked and rolled so there are no dips holding water under the sod.

Sod starts cooking on the pallet, so it goes down the day it arrives. Rolls get laid against a straight edge with the seams pushed tight and staggered like brickwork, because a gapped seam dries out and stays a line in the lawn for a year. Curves and bed edges get cut with a knife rather than folded over. Edges along a walk or a patio get set a touch low so the mower is not scalping them. Then the whole thing gets rolled to press the roots into contact with the soil.

New sod has no root system, so it lives on water. Keep it moist, all of it, including the corners and the strip along the walk that the sprinkler misses, and do not let the seams dry out and curl. Stay off it, and keep the dog off it, until it has knitted down. You check that by lifting a corner in the middle of the lawn: if it comes up like a rug, it is not rooted. First mow comes after that, mower high, blade sharp. We go through this with you the day we finish.

A lot of the sod we lay goes over a yard that already has sprinklers, and often enough the system is part of the problem. Heads get buried by the new grade, sunk, crushed or aimed at a fence. We repair and reset what is there as part of the job: heads raised to finished grade, broken ones replaced, arcs adjusted so the coverage overlaps instead of leaving dry stripes. A dry stripe in a new lawn is usually a coverage problem, not a watering problem, and it shows up in week two or three.

Sod installation runs from spring, once the ground has thawed and dried enough to grade, through early fall. Sod laid in midsummer heat takes more water and more attention, but it takes. Late fall is a gamble, because the roots need time in unfrozen ground before winter and some years they do not get it. On county places out toward Four Corners and Gallatin Gateway the water comes off a well, which is worth thinking about before picking how much lawn to put in, and a septic drain field is not somewhere to run a machine.

The other direction is just as common. We have pulled lawns out for mulch beds, rock beds and native xeriscape: less water, less mowing, and something that still looks like something in August. Sod gets cut and hauled, the grade gets fixed, and beds go in with the plants spaced for the size they end up, not the size they arrive. Young trees get staked, because the wind out toward Belgrade will lean a new tree over before it roots. We draw the layouts and plant plans as well, and we also do fall cleanups.