Sod Maui & Kauai, Turfgrass, & Lawngrass
Common Questions ABOUT Turfgrass Sod
- Is a Sod lawns less work?
Yes, a professional Sod lawns needs no special care because it is a healthy mature lawn when installed, whereas a sprigged or seeded lawns requires years of urturing to reach maturity. Sod is grown under expert supervision from either top quality seed blends or certified hybrid sprigs. After it’s been installed, just water, mow and fertilize your Sod lawns a needed and it will remain a healthy, green carpet of grass, requiring very little maintenance.
- Where can I use Sod?
Sod can be installed practically anywhere, even where seedling is impossible or too costly. Sod if often used to stop soil erosion and water pollution on slopes where rain would wash away both seed and soil. Sod is available in a variety of grasses to suit various needs such as climate amount of usage, sun and shade conditions.
- Can Sod withstand heavy usage?
Certainly! Sod establishes itself quickly. In a couple of weeks, it’s ready for full use. It creates the perfect surface for lawn games and family outdoor living. With today’s various blends of hardy grasses, sod is chosen for parks, golf courses, athletic fields, as well as residential homes and business parks.
- When can I install a Sod lawns?
Sod has revoluntionized the lawn business. You can install a sod lawn anytime during the year.
- How will Sod affect our environment?
With today’s ecological concerns, many more people are considering Sod for its environmental benefits. Sod cools and cleans the atmosphere by reflecting the sun’s heat and absorbing noises, carbon dioxide and other harmful pollutants. It releases valuable oxygen and moisture into the air we breath. As it grows Sod silently contributes to a healthier environment.How is Sod related to our lifestyle?
Today we expect convenience, efficiency and quality in our products. Buildings are going up almost overnight and attractive landscaping is installed in hours. Why wait 1 or 2 year for a new lawn to struggle to maturity when you can have a beautiful sod lawns complimenting your buildings right now. That high quality Sod lawns can be conveniently installed in hours, at a surprisingly low cost.
Why buying sod is a good investment?
- Sod provides instant beauty and instant value–Within a few hours, Sod can transform a yard from bare soil to a lush, living carpet of mature grass. Sod looks luxurious, yet it works like an investment. Landscaping with sod instantly increases the market value of your property from 5% to 10%.
- Enjoy life with cultivated sod—By leaving it to the professionals, you can enjoy the perfect lawn today. Why ruin your leisure hours over a period of 2-3 years trying to establish a lawn from seed, when you could be enjoying life? Sod is grown under expert supervision, using top hybrid grasses which is best adaptable to your locale
- Sod is good for the environmet—Sod creats a healthy atmosphere. Sod provides a soft, clean playing surface for babies, lawn games and family entertaining, unlike an ordinary lawn with its bare sots and weeds. Turf cools the atmosphere by reflecting 50% of the sun’s heat. Turf reduces glare, filters odors and noise, and most important, turf absorgs carbon dioxide and produces oxygen, which cleanses and freshens the environment around your home or business.
- Sod is adaptable where seed is not—Because Sod is a fully mature, cultivated product, it can be installed on slopes and on inferior soils where seeding would be nearly improssible, Sod can also be installed over a longer season, whenever site soils can be tilled, when seedings might fail. In addition, sod provides quick soil stabilization in erosion-prone areas. (American Sod Producers Association)
What are Plugs and Sprigs?
Even though the benefits of a sodded lawns are numerous, the buyer may wish to break up the sod as plugs (2×2” pieces); or use sprigs (loose stem and root pieces) which are purchased by the bushel. To use as plugs, 1 sq. ft. of Sod can be hand planted in a 5 sq. ft. area at approximately 6 inch spacing. One bushel of sprigs covers 100 sq. ft. Sprigs are broadcast much like true seed so that ground coverage will be nearly complete at planting. One to six months may be required before a lawn I full after plugging or sprigging depending on many variables including choice of grass and local weather.
For Golf Courses: Pre-Grown Sod for Greens and Tees
- My greens are old and thatchy (soft), hard to water.
- My green’s grass is full of uncontrollable weeds.
- My green’s grass is impure – contaminated with other Bermuda grass of poorer qulity (texture and color).
- I plan to renovate the soils of my greens and want to replace the turf quickly with the highest qulity weed-free turfgrass in the industry.
- Produced in a soil-free medium with no native soil contact.
- Free of weeds, off-type grasses, native soil borne disease, insects, nematodes, and weed seeds.
- Pre-grown based on your need date so as to be fresh and mature of your use.
- Harvested in large slabs or rolls to minimize the number of edges or “eams” resulting in quicker quality putting surface and tee tops.
- We offer discount on pre-grown grass.
How do I care for Native Plants?
Native plants may be able to survive on less water than grass, but they produce fewer environmental benefits. All plants convert carbon dioxide into oxygen through photosynthesis. The rate at which this conversion takes place is a function of leaf surface area and growth rate. Lawn grasses have far higher leaf densities and growth rates than native California plants. Hence, lawns such as genuine Marathon Sod absorb more greenhouse gas and cool the surroundings better than native plants.
Lawns also provide fire protection and erosion control better than native plants do. Native plants provide little or no aesthetic improvement or habitat enhancement for people, while grass provides numerous advantages.
Grass also provides an attractive recreational surface. If turf sod grass lawns are removed, will children and pets be forced to play on a patch of native shrubs and bark?
What about Artificial Turf?
It is ridiculous to suggest that artificial turf is more environmentally friendly than real grass. Plastic turf is a petroleum product, so consider the carbon footprint and pollution generated to manufacture it! No artificial lawn will last forever, so the cost and the pollution created to replace it and dispose of the old material must also be recognized. Artificial lawns may not “use” water, but they certainly must be washed off periodically to clean away dust and dirt, and to be sanitized of pet waste. The runoff of the dirty and unsanitary water from cleaning an artificial lawns winds up entering the sewer systems, or draining directly to the ocean. Except for not requiring water to stay alive, artificial turf produces absolutely no environmental benefits.
Artificial turf provides no urban habitat enhancement or support for birds and small mammals, in fact it destroys it.
As a recreational surface, artificial turf has some serious flaws. It is certainly not “barefoot friendly.” On a hot summer day, its surface temperature will actually be hotter than asphalt making it a very inhospitable place for sports, recreation or relaxing. In fact, in warm climates artificial sports fields are cooled with a dousing of water prior to games. Also, studies show that more injuries, particularly abrasions, are sustained on artificial turf fields.
How Much Water Does A Lawn Need?
Lawns need less water than most people apply. In fact, in any given week lawns need about the same amount of water necessary to top off a swimming pool in the same climate in the same week. Basically, lawns, including Marathon Sod, require an amount of water equal to evaporation replacement.
Why Are Lawns Said To Use Too Much Water?
Lawns are often over-watered. Almost everyone has seen water running down the gutter from someone’s lawn sprinklers. But, it is not the lawn’s fault that sprinklers are left on too long and water is wasted. The real challenge is watering a lawn correctly.??Typically, sprinkler timers are set by trial and error to a schedule that provides enough water during the hottest weather conditions and therefore turn on too frequently and stay on for too long during cooler times. As a result, lawns have gotten an undeserved reputation for using a lot of water when it is actually a matter of improper settings on the sprinkler timer.
Figuring Out the Correct Sprinkler Run Time
The amount of water a lawn needs is equal to moisture lost through evaporation. The formula for determining sprinkler run time and number of days per week is: evaporation divided by sprinkler precipitation rate equals sprinkler run time. Realistically, few people have the time or the interest to go through the calculations and timer adjustments every week to keep pace with changing weather. In the past, the easy answer to keeping a lawn green was to set the timer on high and if there was runoff, so what? Now with rationing there are fines to be paid.??
How Much Does It Cost To Water Your Lawn??
Water companies typically bill by the “uni3t.” One unit is equal to one HCF (100 cubic feet or about 750 gallons). Units vary widely in cost depending on your water company and whether the rate structure is tiered. Some rates start as low as $1.00 per unit and the high end goes up to $5.50 per unit. A typical 1000 sq. ft. lawn may require about 0.9 unit per week during the warm season, or about 40 units per year. That equates to between $40.00 and $220.00 for one year’s worth of water. Even at the highest water rates it would require over 30 years to pay for an artificial lawn with water savings. Today, either sprinkler timers must be monitored and adjusted on a regular basis, or new technology can be used to make watering even more efficient.
?Sprinkler Timers-Technology to the Rescue?
Recognizing the need for water conservation, modern communication and computer technology have been applied to sprinkler timers. These new generation “smart devices” are called Weather Based Controllers. They are computerized sprinkler timers that are wirelessly connected to weather stations in your area. The computer is programmed with your own sprinkler system and soil types, and everything else is automated. The computer turns on the sprinklers as necessary for exactly the right amount of time depending on real-time weather data.
Time to Get Rid Of The Lawn, Or To Get The Irrigation Right?
Those who sell water are promoting lawn elimination programs as a water conservation strategy. Such programs are not unlike “throwing the baby out with the bath water.” Lawns have innumerable environmental and quality of life benefits, and eliminating lawns eliminates those benefits. Watering lawns correctly is the “win-win” solution and weather-based controllers are the easiest way to accomplish it.
Remembering How Lawns Use Water
Once again, lawns use water through evaporation and transpiration. The water that is used needs to be replaced in order for the lawns to survive. Water evaporates faster nearer the surface, so the deeper and stronger the root system of the lawn, the less (or more slowly) the lawn is affected by evaporation and the less frequently water is required to keep it healthy and green.