New User & New Sod

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redleader74
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Joined: August 5th, 2020, 2:36 pm
Location: San Leandro, CA
Grass Type: tall & fine fescue blend
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New User & New Sod

Post by redleader74 » August 5th, 2020, 4:26 pm

Hello, I'm new to this community. I recently had new sod installed in my front and backyards. It is a blend of tall and fine fescues. To save a buck I didn't have irrigation installed and instead am using oscillating sprinklers. The sod was installed back in mid-June. It looks "decent" so far but a number of issues I'd like some help on:

1. As you can see from the photo there are noticeable brown patches. At first I thought I wasn't watering enough so I watered more but when I do, I start getting mushrooms growing in the lawn (at first the mushrooms were of the light colored/tan variety and now they are all black/gray).

2. Soon after the sod was installed I started seeing quackgrass. I'd always he an abundance of quackgrass on the site so I'm not sure if there are still seeds in the soil or if it's coming from the neighbors or what. Prior to the sod installation the site was just a mangled mess of dirt, all kinds of weeds, and more or less dead lawn. From what I found online, there is no one weed killer specifically designed for quackgrass.

3. The backyard sod has same issues as 1 and 2 above. Although in the backyard I'm finding a lot of wasps (or hornets?) hovering over the lawn. From what found online it appears they're feeding off of grubs in the soil.

I'm mowing tomorrow and will also begin fertilizing so I'm hoping the fertilizer will help with some of this. But as a newbie at maintaining my own lawn, it would be great to get some input on the main issues above.
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andy10917
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Re: New User & New Sod

Post by andy10917 » August 5th, 2020, 10:19 pm

How was the soil prepped for the sod before it was layed down?

redleader74
Posts: 35
Joined: August 5th, 2020, 2:36 pm
Location: San Leandro, CA
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Re: New User & New Sod

Post by redleader74 » August 7th, 2020, 12:51 pm

Thanks. Here are some photos of the stages including what the yard looked like before, which was a complete disaster of weeds and dead grass. So I guess they dug all that up, and then put down a layer of soil.

I also took a closer look at the brown patches and see that many of the roots or the parts closest to the soild are very dark/black, so perhaps I am indeed over watering? That would probably explain the mushrooms though oddly the mushrooms are growing in the lush green parts and not in the parts I'm supposedly over watering.


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Dchall_San_Antonio
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Re: New User & New Sod

Post by Dchall_San_Antonio » August 9th, 2020, 3:02 pm

I'm glad you included a pic of the finished project, because I was about to go a little bit ballistic. Just to confirm what I think I see, you have a central bed of grass surrounded by what looks like a wooden barrier. Then outside that barrier is additional landscaping including a rock walkway next to the house and something out on the side of the yard opposite the driveway. Is that correct?

I have another question, and I assure you the questions will end once we get enough info; what is your watering schedule? How often and for how long are you watering? Is the soil squishy, like can you walk on it without sinking in and pushing up other soil? I don't recommend you take any more steps on the lawn than necessary to verify squishy or not. Walking on wet soil is a bad thing which causes soil compaction.

So too much water on an established turf, looks exactly like your lawn. It could get far worse, though, so we sort of need your watering schedule. Your sod is not old enough to be completely established, but it still could be you are watering too frequently for the state of establishment. Generally an established lawn should be watered deeply and infrequently. Deeply means 1 inch all at one time. With your oscillator sprinkler on 1/2 throw, I would guesstimate that it takes 4 hours to get 1 inch of water. You can test that hypothesis by placing cat food or tuna cans around the yard and timing how long it takes to fill them all. Be sure to put some in the poor areas and some in the better areas. Remember that time, because that's how long you need to water every time you water. That probably seems like a LOT of water, but the trick is you won't be watering that often. Most Californians insist on watering daily. That could not be more wrong. In San Leandro you should be able to go for 2 weeks, easily, between watering ONCE THE TURF IS ESTABLISHED. Even in the "heat" of summer. I put heat in quotes because I would kill to have your climate in Texas. You can get to the established condition by weaning away from whatever you're doing now. Let us know what you're doing now and lets set up a plan.

Also, spend $25 and get a much better oscillator before you do the watering test. Your low budget oscillator is highly unreliable. The newer/better ones are seriously much more reliable. I like the Orbit, full metal oscillator.
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These can still be broken, but if you don't try to break it, it should last for years. The budget ones sometimes don't work out of the box. The biggest mistake people make with oscillators is they try to rotate the sprayer by hand. When you do you'll hear clicking. That's the sound of the internal gears breaking. If you need to change the position of the sprayer, let the water flowing through do it for you. Here's what the internals of the turbo oscillators look like.
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That results in a gear ratio of about 500:1 using plastic parts, so it's fragile in there.

redleader74
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Re: New User & New Sod

Post by redleader74 » August 10th, 2020, 1:15 am

Dchall, thanks for the detailed feedback. I've been doing lots of research on the matter as well and one thing that jarred me is the same as what you mentioned....that it takes "HOURS" to get even an inch of water using an oscillating sprinkler. I have definitely not been running it even close to that long. I think half an hour is the longest I've ever run it, even from the day the sod was laid. But first, to answer some of your questions....yes, what you see in the finished photo is the extent of my front lawn. The back lawn is also a basic square only slightly larger. What you see in the photo is also a low 3 ft high wooden fence and a strip of Mexican beach pebbles with natural stone steps. Also (brace yourself!) I have no watering schedule and with regards to water, I really have no idea what I'm doing, how much, how often so on. When my contractor finished laying out the new sod, he only told me that it needs lots of water in the beginning but didn't provide any further instruction other than that. So with what I thought was ample watering (which obviously wasn't), the sod soon started showing brown spots, mainly along the edges and at the corners. But then I started watering with a hose and that seemed to improve things. After that I went back to using the oscillator and things started turning brown again, at most I'm running the oscillator a few times a week at no more than say, 15-20 minutes a session.

To answer another of your questions, the soil is not soft or squishy, in fact it's very hard. I did a rudimentary soil test today. Since I don't have a soil probe, I just hammered a thin metal pipe into the brown areas of the lawn and the soil was very compact and very dry. I've come up with my own theory of sorts, that based on what I'm learning here and online and how little I've actually watered, that the lawn is under watered. For the front year I set the oscillator on the near side, where the border of the lawn and the pebble strip is. The pattern of brown shown int he photo, may mean that the more water is reaching the far ends of the lawn, when the oscillator is at the lowest angle, but as the spray moves closer to the oscillator, the water is high and maybe more of it is being lost in the wind before it's able to make it's way back down? Not sure if this makes any sense, but other than the browness, I'm not getting any of the soft/squishy soil, or any other signs of over watering.


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Dchall_San_Antonio
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Re: New User & New Sod

Post by Dchall_San_Antonio » August 10th, 2020, 6:20 pm

Blank slate: I get it. At least you won't have to unlearn a lot of lawn care garbage like I did when these Internet forums first hit the world.
Watering new sod or seed: Light and frequent should be the schedule. Light for an oscillator is, likely 1/2 hour. Frequent means 3x per day at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. With that in mind and what you said, your grass roots might not be fully knit to the underlying soil quite yet. Or at best, weakly. You can test this. Try lifting the corner of several pieces of the sod. If you can lift any of them, then you should get into a more frequent watering schedule for at least a week. The idea is to get the roots to meet with the soil. Once that happens you can back off on the frequency and go up on the duration. I'm going to assume you're good to go with deeper and less frequent watering. If your pictures showed a lot of stress at the edges of all the pieces of grass, then I'd be more worried.

What you have now is a weakly rooted stand of fescue. Do the can test to start on developing deeper roots. Actually, do this first. Spray the lawn with shampoo. Yes, any shampoo you can see through is fine. Shampoo is good because it doesn't have the bactericides found in dish soaps. Clear is good because it doesn't have the oils that shampoo conditioners have. Apply from a hose end sprayer at a rate of 3 ounces per 1,000 square feet. It makes no difference if you mistakenly use 6, 9, or more ounces per 1,000. Just get the shampoo out there. THEN do the can test. The water applied to fill the cans will wash the shampoo down into the soil and go to work. The shampoo will set up conditions for the soil microbes soften the soil. You should not have to do anything else for that...forever or until the soil becomes dried, cracked open, and completely dead. This also means you should never have to do core aeration to the lawn, because it will become soft to the foot when you walk on it. You'll notice that mostly when the soil is wet after a rain or deep irrigation. So, do the can test and get some water deep into the soil. If you get runoff before you fill the cans, stop watering immediately and allow the soil to absorb the moisture. Resume in about 15-30 minutes and watch again for runoff. Continue stopping and restarting as needed until the cans fill. The shampoo will help to fix the runoff problem if you have one. Once you finish the can test, the yard will be deeply watered. Memorize how long it took to fill the cans, because that will be your new watering time from now on for that sprinkler (the new one) and hose combination. The grass should respond to the water quickly. Watch it carefully to see when it starts to wilt. Then water it again at 1/2 the full time you watered before. It should go 3-4 days not needing water, so essentially you'll be watering twice a week and giving it a full inch. If it goes longer before wilting, great. If it only goes 2 days, don't fret. It will get better every time you do this. The roots are moving deeper and picking up moisture deeper in the soil. If it can go 5 days, then try going to 3/4-inch and stretching the dry spell. Eventually, for San Leandro, you should easily be able to go 2 weeks with one inch of water applied all at one time. I'm thinking by October.

redleader74
Posts: 35
Joined: August 5th, 2020, 2:36 pm
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Re: New User & New Sod

Post by redleader74 » August 10th, 2020, 6:48 pm

Sounds good, I'll get to work on that. I do have one question on watering with a hose. I'm guessing that watering with a hose will fill the cans much sooner than with an oscillator (or any other kind of mechanical device). So even though it means standing there holding a hose, this would mean shorter watering time than running the oscillator?

Also, yesterday after more or less concluding that my issue is under watering I gave both the back and front lawns a good hose watering, mainly the areas that were brown. But the areas that are not brown are in fact very thick green and lush and very nice, the problem is, if I over water these areas I get mushroom growth (in the beginning the mushrooms were light/tan colored, now they are a grayish black).

And you're right about "weakly rooted" because those brown areas, when I pull on the grass it's pretty weak and comes out easily vs. the thick lush green areas.

Lastly, my blend is a mix of two different fescues. I don't understand these blends well but does it mean that there distinct patches of only one or the other of the two fescues or are the two fescues interwoven together so that it's pretty much an even blend across the entire lawn? Because right now, the areas that are browning out the most tend to be a very thin, short light blades of grass wherease the areas that are healthy and thick are broader stiffer blades of grass.

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Dchall_San_Antonio
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Re: New User & New Sod

Post by Dchall_San_Antonio » August 15th, 2020, 6:33 pm

The different fescues suffer differently from heat and watering.

There's no way to spend enough time hand watering to get an even distribution of water on the soil. The oscillator is the best approach, in my humble opinion. I spent several hours with the oscillator on yesterday on an area that I have not watered for 2 months. In that time we've had 1/2 inch of rain, but the grass only gets 1/2 day of direct sun, so it doesn't dry as quickly. I had the oscillator on spraying only 5 feet on full sweep - in other words, very low flow/pressure. I left it in place for one hour at a time and moved it 3x. I have one more spot to cover, but the point is I could not have done that by hand and gotten it even. It still takes the same amount of water. Had I done it by hand with more water flow I would have gotten runoff instead of penetration. And it would have been uneven.

If you're getting mushroom, that means the soil is wet enough to support massive fungal growth. Not all fungal growth is bad, in fact most of it is great, so don't beat yourself up about a few mushrooms. Leave them alone and figure out why the soil is so wet right there.

redleader74
Posts: 35
Joined: August 5th, 2020, 2:36 pm
Location: San Leandro, CA
Grass Type: tall & fine fescue blend
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Re: New User & New Sod

Post by redleader74 » August 24th, 2020, 3:44 pm

Just wanted to come back and say a word of thanks for the help and tips. So my assumption (that I was underwatering) was correct. For the most part the lawn has made a very good recovery but as you can see from the photo, it's the far side (along the sidewalk) that is now needing a bit more attention. Last, last week I gave both front and back lawn a significant watering with both a combination of the oscillator as well as the garden hose for the far corners that the oscillator struggles to reach. I also aerated it and fertilized using "Lawn Food' (10-0-2) from Purely Organic.


The mushrooms went away after a few more days after that last big watering. I just watered this past Saturday and no mushrooms, so I think I'm getting close to getting the lawn on a good watering schedule by monitoring these things. I will probably hold out till this coming weekend to water again.

The front yard has a lot of quackgrass now and I know that that's one of the tougher weeds to get rid of. I'm mowing once a week and hopefully with consistent care (water, mow, fertilize, etc.) we'll be able to keep the weeds at bay.

In the backyard I have some sod lines that are still there, especially in the corners. My feeling is that because my contractor never gave me good/detailed watering instructions the first month or so after installation the sod was not rooting well and still isn't in certain spots.
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Dchall_San_Antonio
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Re: New User & New Sod

Post by Dchall_San_Antonio » August 26th, 2020, 2:46 pm

Contractors usually give the wrong advice on watering, so count your blessings.

redleader74
Posts: 35
Joined: August 5th, 2020, 2:36 pm
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Re: New User & New Sod

Post by redleader74 » August 26th, 2020, 4:04 pm

Ok, so after this weekend's watering I'm getting mushrooms again and lots more than before. However, they're gone by the end of the day and return again in the morning. My guess is that maybe I overwatered over the weekend?

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Dchall_San_Antonio
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Re: New User & New Sod

Post by Dchall_San_Antonio » August 30th, 2020, 7:41 pm

Yes. I assume you've done the can test. Have you done the screwdriver test? Poke a screwdriver into the soil before you water. Then do it again after you water. What's the difference? The screwdriver should easily go all the way in after watering, but not always easy or not always all the way before watering. Do that and report back. You might need some shampoo on the yard.

redleader74
Posts: 35
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Re: New User & New Sod

Post by redleader74 » April 23rd, 2021, 5:55 pm

Hi Dchall, it's been many months and the lawn has done quite fine since then, especially with very lush green rapid grown through the winter. But my real problem now is QUACKGRASS! It's at the point where it's so prevalent and so rapid that I'm learning to accept it as part of my lawn :(

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Dchall_San_Antonio
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Re: New User & New Sod

Post by Dchall_San_Antonio » April 25th, 2021, 4:01 pm

Here is what Purdue says...
Chemical control: Unfortunately, only nonselective control options exist for quackgrass control in cool-season turf. Spot-treating with a nonselective systemic herbicide such as glyphosate (Roundup) will help to manage quackgrass in cool-season lawns. Results are best when applications are made while the weedy plants are young, fully green, actively growing, and not under drought stress. At least two glyphosate applications are recommended, but three or more may be needed since this is a rhizomatous grass. You must allow the weed to regrow before making a follow-up application.
What that means is you will have to sacrifice some of your lawn to kill it. It also says the faster you get on it, the less sacrifice you'll have to make.

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