"ianh" wrote in message
...

Hi,

I'm in need of some advice re my newly laid lawn. It was laid last week
by a friend who 'supposed' to know what he was doing.

It was really hot when it went down but he said that I shouldn't water
it until the sun goes down or else I'll scorch the grass. It was
completed about 3:00pm ish and then I went out.

When I came back to water it at about 7:30 when the sun had started to
set, all the turf had shrunk by at least 1 inch in between all the
sections. I watered it for about 1 1/2 hours that night and when I got
up in the morning it was worse. I watered it again in the evening,
again when the sun had gone down (as he'd told me to do) but the gaps
had got bigger 2 -3 inches.

He came around the next day whilst I was at work and said he'd fixed
it. He'd pulled all the sections together again. But now I noticed it
was going yellow in a lot of places. I would say about 30 - 35% of it
now is yellow.

Its quite a big plot, 110 square meters and all the joining lines have
gone yellow as well as the first 3-4 runs of the longest side.

I've continued to water it every evening when I've got home from work
but it doesn't seem to be having any affect on it at all.

Also a lot of the joins between the sections are now overlapping were
he's moved them to join the gaps.

I really don't know what to do next the whole lawn is just a mess.

Can anyone give any advice please?

Thanks in advance, Ian




--
ianh
Ian - you've given us enough information to know that things are going
badly, and some clues that there may be other problems --

There are a couple of things you didn't mention that may make the situation
worse:

1. Was anything done to improve the site before the sod went down? (e.g.,
is it on a prepared bed of good soil or was it just laid on top of an
existing weedy area?

2. Was it a good quality sod from a professional source or was it something
that was taken out by hand from another area using amateur tools?

Watering -- New sod must be kept from drying out - especially the roots.
Rather than drenching it for hours 1-2X a day, it's better to put down about
1/2" of water several times during the day until the root system can take
hold, keeping it moist but not saturated.. I have trouble thinking of a
place in the UK where it would be so hot that the sod would dry out as fast
as you've described.

You may have more than one problem -- if sections are turning brown, it may
be because it's dried out - but if it's turning yellow it could be because
it's gotten too much water and the roots can't take up oxygen and nutrients.
You need to find the intermediate point where the sod doesn't dry out but
also does not stay flooded.

If the site wasn't prepared properly there isn't much you can do now except
try to keep this grass growing - the grass blades are reacting to the lack
of a supporting root structure to provide nutrients. If you can keep the
sod from drying out, the roots will eventually become strong enough to
support new blade growth. In the meantime it'll look bad.

Typically in poorly laid sod the edge of each piece will dry out first
resulting in a checkerboard appearance, which is amplified if the pieces
have shrunk and left gaps. One thing you can do is fill in gaps between sod
pieces with compost which will help hold water and keep the edges from
drying out. The compost will also take up standing moisture and stabilize
the situation if you're using too much water.

For the first couple of weeks it's going to look bad - worse because of the
advice you were given about watering. With good sping season rains and
supplemental watering when needed to keep things from drying out, in a
couple of weeks it will start to take hold and look better. So the two
things I think you should be careful of a

-- Don't flood it, but don't let it completely dry out, and
-- Fill in gaps between the sod to help hold in moisture.

Right now, it probably looks about as bad as it's going to get --