Landscaping Ideas: How to Embrace Your Lawn and Garden

As winter grinds to a halt with stops and starts throughout March, April and even early May, colder areas of the U.S. are gearing up for planting and growing. If you would like to revitalize your landscape this year and you live in one of these colder regions of the country, your lawn might need a little help. Sod may be a viable solution for your yard, but it requires some very special growing tips. Here is how sodding service in colder areas works, and how to get your sod in and growing properly.

Buying Sod in Colder Climes

These colder states, often the Midwestern, Plains and Northwestern states, often have indoor sod farms. This helps the sod farmers get ahead of the demand for new sod every spring, when it would be impossible to produce sod after the ground has been frozen and under snow all winter. There may also be some "reserve sod" farms in your area. These are sod farmers who have a "bumper crop" of sod from the previous fall that they have harvested, rolled out in a heated shed and kept watered and fed until it can be sold. You can buy your sod from either of these sod farmers, but you may want to buy it from the indoor sod farmer rather than the reserve sod farmer. The indoor sod farmer has fresher sod, which is more likely to last until the sod can effectively take root in your yard.

Installing the Sod

Until the ground has fully thawed and can take in water rather than leave water on the surface to freeze or pool, your sod will have to sit and wait. Once the ground is ready and is moist without being overly wet and muddy, the landscaper or sod installer can deliver and install your sod. Rolled sod works best in these situations because it easily rolls out like a carpet in uniform pieces and fits together like a puzzle. Rolled sod is also less likely to slip around during installation and just a week or two after installation, so you can walk on it but not run on it until it has fully taken root.

Watering and/or Feeding the Sod

As the temperatures fluctuate until it is quite warm out again, your sod may need some encouragement. Keep watering to a minimum, or none at all if you get several April showers. Use a grass fertilizer or lawn fertilizer as recommended by your landscaper, or utilize a liquid spray feed service to get your sod to put down roots. It may take a little more time because of where you live, but sod can and does grow into a very nice lawn eventually.

For more information, contact Metro Sod & Seeding Inc or a similar company.