How We Got Here
Viewed as an “instant lawn”, sod seldom receives the immediate care it needs. Sod is grown under ideal conditions in order to produce a product to sell. Typically, homeowners are surprised by a lawn’s decline following the first season and it’s important to understand why this happens. Just like corn or beans, sod is grown in a field where there are multiple feet of undisturbed topsoil. In addition to excellent soil, seedlings are heavily fertilized, irrigated, and cut with mowers at a frequency and height intended to promote good health, quickly bringing the plants to maturity. All of these “extras” follow the sod from the field to the lawn but, things are much different in this new home. Growing conditions went from the best to the worst, usually on a day when it’s 90 degrees, sunny and dry. Most sodded lawns will “hang on” for the remainder of the first season, living off the remaining nutrients carried from the sod farm. Following the first winter, a sodded lawn will look much different, brown and lifeless. Most people associate the poor spring color to an excess of thatch however, the poor color is due to the lack of new growth. Blades of grass are brown following dormancy, winter or summer. These (dead) blades of grass do not turn green again but are replaced by new shoots that grow from the protected root system. The plant needs energy to promote growth and with compromised soil, additional stimulation is needed from fertilizer. Without fertilizer to stimulate growth, new growth is absent and the declining turfgrass will thin, allowing weeds to fill in. Without competition from actively growing (spreading) turfgrass, weeds will begin to spread. A common issue in new lawns is the spread of tall fescue.
Tall fescue (sometimes confused with crabgrass) is part of the “cover crop” that existed before the sod. Unless the site is sterilized, killing existing vegetation before the sod, hearty, deep rooted grasses like tall fescue will blow through declining, malnourished sod. This situation can be seen in almost every neighborhood and quickly identifies which lawns did not receive proper care early on. Successful management is only achieved by being proactive. Nature has a plan and purpose; we need to pay attention and recognize what’s missing. I think we all get caught up in modern conveniences and while we have access to almost anything with Prime delivery, nature requires a bit of forethought. We can’t expect nature to succeed in unnatural environments nor can we expect to quickly pull back what has already unraveled. If we pay attention to the things we already know, we can do well to prevent many problems and expensive remedies.
