Friday, December 5, 2014

Sod Or Seed, Which Is Best?

New home owners will have to ask themselves if they want sod or if they will seed the yard. You will have advantages to both methods, so it will really depend on a few factors whether you plant or sod your yard. Planting will obviously take more time before a usable yard is established but it is also much cheaper than installing sod.
Sod
The main advantage of sod is that you will have a usable lawn much quicker. Sod is commercially grown grass that is cut into large sections. You can then order the sod and have it delivered to your front door. At this point all you have to do is lay it down in the yard and you can turn a dirt yard into a fully functional lawn in one day.
That is over simplifying the installation procedures, but it is much quicker than planting grass. You will have to prepare the soil before you get your sod. If you lay sod on top of poor soil, you will have a poor lawn. The sod is meant to have little soil with it and it is to take hold of the existing soil in the yard to grow. Hence, both with sod and seeds, you will have to prepare the soil in order to have a nice lawn.
You will also need to roll the lawn after it has been laid. This helps smooth out the lawn and have the roots come into contact with the existing soil. You will want to limit walking on the lawn for the first 10 days and you will want to water daily for a couple of hours in the morning until the roots are able to take hold of the original soil.
The disadvantages of sod are that it is labor intensive and it is more expensive than seeding your lawn. It takes a lot more man hours to put in a sod lawn than planting seed. Additionally, the commercial grass is much more expensive than seed. Hence, labor costs and the grass make the sod option much more expensive.
Seed
Seeding your lawn is cheaper and does not require as much labor, but it takes much longer to have a usable lawn. You will have to prepare the soil if you are laying sod or planting seed, but soil preparation is much more critical when planting seed. In order to have better results, you will also have to be careful what part of the season you are planting. You can lay sod during the entire growing season, but planting your yard needs to be done early in the season so that it is established before the cold months come and your grass goes dormant.
If you do decide to seed your yard, you will be able to do so at a much cheaper rate than sod. Once the soil is prepared you will need to purchase seed. You have more choices of grass seed to choose from when you are planting instead of laying sod. If you have a shady yard or a high traffic yard, you can pick different grasses than if you have a sunny yard or low traffic. You will probably have only of few choices of sod.
After planting, you will want to care for your yard with exactness. Rope off your yard so that you don't have traffic on the newly planted grass. Water the yard often to help the grass germinate and take hold. You may need to reseed in areas where the grass didn't take as well.
In summary, you can plant seed or lay commercial sod when doing your lawn landscaping. You will want to consider your budget and time when you decide which decision to make.


Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/538070

No comments:

Post a Comment