10 Tips for Laying Sod Like a Pro

In the battle of sod versus seed, sod comes out on top if you’re looking for a ready-made, lush lawn and instant curb appeal. However, if you lay sod wrong, you could end up with a patchy, brown, bad investment rather than a verdant backyard oasis. These prep, position, and post-roll tips for laying sod will help set you up for success.

1. Pick a High-Quality Sod

Buy the right type of sod for your climate and conditions from a respected dealer who follows best management practices. This means you don’t have to worry about your sod arriving already contaminated with weeds or lesser-quality grasses than those you think you’re purchasing. 

Before you accept a delivery of sod, inspect it to ensure it’s dense, uniformly thick, evenly moist (not dripping wet), and free from yellowing blades of grass.

2. Order the Right Amount of Sod

Avoid overspending or ending up with a bald corner on your lawn by accurately calculating how much sod you need. Whether ordering by pallet, piece, or roll, carefully measure your yard to get the appropriate square footage and add 5% to 10% extra to allow for cutoffs. 

Sod ordered by the pallet covers an average of 500 square feet, making this the most economical and practical option for large lawn landscaping projects.

3. Lay Sod at the Right Time of Year

In most regions, the best time to lay sod is spring or fall. You can lay sod at any time of year, but opting for these seasons helps to keep the soil desirably moist and reduces the chance of damaging the establishing lawn with intense heat or cold. 

Cool-season grass types establish best in the fall, and warm-season grasses benefit from spring laying. If you need to lay your sod during the intense summer heat, especially in drought-prone regions, you’ll have to go to extra efforts to prevent the burgeoning lawn from drying out.

4. Lay Sod Straight Away

Don’t have your sod delivered before you’ve done the right soil prep work. You want to install your sod immediately after it arrives—or, at the very least, within 48 hours of it being cut. When conditions are hot and windy, speedy installation is even more important. 

The longer you leave sod in a roll or on a pallet, the greater the risk of this living plant material drying out, making it difficult to establish roots. 

5. Protect Sod Edges 

Freshly laid sod edging dries out quicker than the rest of the turf. Gently raking a fresh mound of soil up to the grass border prevents root exposure in any gaps. This reduces the risk of an unsightly and hard-to-reverse brown ring developing around the edges of your green lawn.  

6. Minimize Traffic During Laying and Establishment

Kneeling on a piece of plywood while installing the sod keeps your pants from getting damp and distributes your weight more evenly over a larger area, helping to prevent turf damage.

Minimize foot traffic in the first 2 to 4 weeks following laying sod to give the roots time to bed in. Coach your kids so they know they’ll have to wait to play soccer on the lawn and find an alternative potty place for your pets. Pet urine can kill grass even when it’s established, but it’s even more problematic for new sod. 

You can tell rooting is successful when you gently lift a corner of the sod and it offers some resistance.