Seed vs. sod

When it’s time to install a new lawn, contractors must weigh numerous factors including time of year, terrain, customer expectations and their own preferences to make the choice between seeding or installing sod.

Yet with its instant gratification for customers and ease of installation, more and more contractors are ready to roll out the sod rather than spend time spreading seed.

“So, we have three different methods when we put in a new lawn,” says Scott Lamon, owner of Tynic Landscaping in Southwick, Massachusetts. “They are seed rolling, hydroseeding and then sod. And the way I view those are good, better, best.”

Dave DiGregorio, general manager with Ground Works Land Design, based in Westlake, Ohio, adds that nothing beats the “wow factor” associated with sod.

“There are pros and cons to both seed and sod,” he says. “The instant gratification of sod is always a hit with clients and with us. Usually in a day or two you go from an old lawn or no lawn to a full, beautiful green lawn. That’s always a nice big shock value and impressive service to offer.”

Great expectations

After switching his company in New Port Ritchey, Florida, over to strictly landscape installs, Owner Drake Mailhot says Southern Landscape Solution’s customers don’t want to sit around and wait for a seeded lawn to flourish.

“My clientele likes that instant gratification of sod versus seed,” he says. “My customers wouldn’t be laying seed. They want it done instantly. They don’t have the patience to wait.”

Before opting for a sod installation, Lamon says there are two things customers must have in order to move forward — a solid budget and easy access to irrigation.

“What we recommend to the customer depends upon budget first and foremost, and then does the customer have irrigation,” he says.

“Because if they do not, then sod is off the table…If we can educate a customer on the benefits of using sod and the proper care and maintenance techniques after the sod is installed, it’s by far our preferred method of putting in a new lawn.”

Although it tends to be the more expensive option, Lamon says customers still prefer it to seeding.

“Customers who want lawns put in immediately and don’t want to deal with weeds...the benefits of sod really outweigh the costs,” he adds.

DiGregorio says the biggest benefit to seeding over sod is easily the cost savings.

“It’s more cost effective to do a seeded lawn as sod has a lot more material costs involved with it,” he says.

However, DiGregorio says getting a seeded lawn to look great takes time and it can be hard to establish customer expectations during this time.

“It almost takes two to almost three full seasons for a seeded lawn’s root system to mature. So, people paying for a service are hoping for a quick result, which you get with sod, but seed really takes a while,” DiGregorio says. “There’s bound to be holes and spots that don’t grow in, and you can seed it until you’re blue in the face, but really it just takes time and long-term care to get a seeded lawn up to 100% maturity.”

In Ground Works’ market, DiGregorio says customers’ choices between seed and sod are typically split fairly evenly.

“It really just comes down to the appetite of the client’s budget,” he says. “We try to always push the sod because of that instant gratification — there’s really no replacing that. And you can kind of fast-forward that two-to-three-year process. The sod is already grown and has gone through that.”

But no matter how many times they tell clients that their newly seeded lawn will look beautiful eventually, DiGregorio says they still field a lot of questions and concerns.

“People just get antsy,” he says. “We try to be very clear during the upfront that it’s a two- to three-year process. And it’ll be about what’s happening underground that’s more important than what we see on the topside of the soil.”

Water, water everywhere

Like Lamon, DiGregorio says having a trustworthy irrigation system is imperative for getting sod to successfully root.

“It takes a lot of water when you first put sod in — same with seed. Without a sprinkler system it can be difficult to keep all of the sod watered 100%,” he says. “If you put a sprinkler out there and it’s not hitting some of the edges or some of the corners you can see that burnout and it dies off. But it will recover.”

Mailhot says he puts strict watering rules in his customers’ contracts when they opt for a sod installation. Mailhot acknowledges those rules can be difficult to adhere to during times of drought.

“You definitely have to give them that watering schedule because most of the time, customers just don’t know,” he says. “In our contract we include how to water shortly after your sod is installed. In Florida, we’re on timed watering schedules. Sometimes, you have to break that rule, or you’ll lose your whole crop because of how dry we get down here.”

Sod needs continuous water every day for about a month or two, Mailhot adds.

“You do not want to water in the middle of the day because it allows for those water droplets to be like a magnifying glass and burn the leaves of the sod,” he says. “You don’t want to water too late at night either, or fungus starts to set in.”

Lamon says it’s very common to see customers over-watering their sod shortly after it’s installed.

Lamon adds the signs that a freshly sodded lawn is either over- or under-watered are easy to spot.

“You can simply tell if the lawn is underwatered because the sod starts to shrink,” Lamon says. “So, if you’re seeing half-inch gaps between the rolls, you know that there’s not enough water being put down. Conversely, if you have mushrooms right out of the gate, you know that they are putting down too much water.”

The right time & place

It takes more than just the right amount of watering to make a seeded or sod lawn successful. One option may outweigh another depending on location, terrain and time of year.

In Massachusetts, Lamon says sometimes the hilly topography often causes him to hydroseed some lawns.

“On slopes, which we have a lot of here in Western (Massachusetts), we like to hydroseed on those,” he says. “We can sod, and we can seed as well, but runoff remediation methods really need to be employed. That’s either an erosion control tube or rows of straw holding back that water and knocking it down.”

While most new lawns are done in the summer months, Lamon says sod does better during the heatwaves of July and early August.

“With our climate here, we’ll have a day where the sun is shining but we’re expecting heavy downpours in the afternoon,” he says. “That’s more conducive to a sod installation than it is a typical seed installation.

“If we’re doing seed, we like to plant the last week of August through the first few weeks of September,” Lamon adds. “We hope to get a few cuttings in before the ground freezes. Then in the springtime, that lawn will really take off.”

Mailhot says the biggest hinderance he encounters along Florida’s Gulf Coast are salt spray and hurricane season.

“We have so much washout here,” he says. “If you’re landscaping on the Gulf here, you’ve got to be very careful because whatever you put down has to be hearty to that salt spray…it’s difficult because we don’t have four seasons down here. It’s either hot or cold. If you do seed, you really have to time it super right… so I’d say you’d want to lay seed in the springtime.”

All that rain during the summer months can also impact the sod market. Mailhot says it’s difficult to cut the sod due to flooding.

“Sod can’t be cut down here in the rainy season because these fields flood out and you’d be doing nothing but tearing up sod,” he says.

“So, you have to let those customers know that during rainy season. Sometimes we’re booked two months out and then enter rainy season and they can’t understand that the sod isn’t being installed because it’s not at the yard for us to pick up because it hasn’t been cut because the fields are rained out.”

In Ohio, DiGregorio suggests waiting until the fall for seeding.

“Fall time is the absolute best time to do either,” he says.

He adds that seeding in the summer just results in more weeds, prolonging the process.

“When you start looking at seeded lawns in the spring or summer, what tends to happen is it gets hotter and weeds are germinating during that time, so when you have an open lawn full of soil, it invites a lot of undesirables,” DiGregorio says.

“You can get like half weed growth and half grass. It takes a long time to work your way back and clean that back out.”

The dry heat during the summer months also doesn’t help get the most out of a seeded lawn.

“If you do it in the spring or early summer, the root system doesn’t have enough time to mature before we get to the really hot months of July and August,” he adds. “It tends to burn some of the new grass out when you’re doing seed and invites more undesirables in. Fall time is really the best time to do a seeded lawn. You’ll have all fall and all the next spring for that root system to mature and strengthen.”

What works well

And when it comes to what kind of seed to be putting down, DiGregorio says he definitely has his preferences.

“The type of seed you use makes a big difference,” he says. “At Ground Works, we use turf type tall fescue with a bluegrass blend. We also use coded seed. It’s a more expensive product, but it yields a better return. And that’s the biggest goal — yielding a big return of as much grass as possible in a quick amount of time.”

DiGregorio notes the company has tried numerous seed varieties over the years before picking their new go-to.

“We’ve used all kinds of stuff and we’ve found the turf type tall fescue with a bluegrass blend has been the best hearty grass that stays nice and green, is drought tolerant and disease resistant,” he adds.

Down in Florida, Mailhot says he has two favorite sod selections.

“We always want that sod to be St. Augustine or Zosia because we’ve laid the Bahia and it usually comes brown and it’s in so many pieces that it takes double the time to lay,” he says. “Even though it’s cheaper, and the customers like it because it’s cheaper, the manhours it takes to lay it and the difficulty for my guys putting it together is harder. It’s like piecing together a jigsaw puzzle.”

Easy access

Now that COVID-19 related supply chain shortages have slowed, the three contractors say they’ve had less issues procuring both sod and seed.

“Our sod is readily available,” Lamon says. “We have not had issues like some of the members of my peer group have had a hard time getting sod and having that pipeline available throughout the season. We don’t have that challenge.”

While it is available, Lamon notes sod prices are up somewhat significantly.

“Like everything else, sod prices are going up,” he says. “They’ve gone up year-over-year and it usually follows the seed market. Although, we have seen seed prices come down this year in cost. Sod has not come down this year in price.”

Ground Works has had no trouble getting sod lately either, so much so that oftentimes, the sod they are laying was cut from the sod farm the same day.

“The sod farms we use are mainly in Michigan. It’s cut very early in the morning and rolled up. It’s shipped down here to Ohio and then we bring it to the customer’s house and roll it out,” DiGregorio says.

“For a perfect install, it’s cut in the morning and by the end of the day it’s in your yard. It’s a quick turnaround time and that gives it the best chance to be successful.”