How to Install Shade Tolerant Discovery Bermuda Sod and Selecting the Best Bermuda sod

Discovery Bermuda Sod

Let's take a couple minutes and talk about sod. In this case, we're talking about Discovery Bermuda Sod. The success of your site installation project is going to depend on a couple of things. First and foremost the prep. How you prepare the yard? How you amend the soil? Do you loosen the earth? What you do with the existing weeds? Do you spray them? Kill them? Get rid of them? Scrape them off? Secondly, though, and what we're going to talk about now, is the quality of the sod product itself. In this case, I'm using Discovery Bermuda Sod. Discovery Bermuda is an incredible shade tolerance Sod. It requires about 3 hours of sunlight a day. There are 504 square feet that come on this pallet. Pallet typically come in 504 square feet.

Fresh Sod

This Sod just arrived on our job site and there are a few things that I want to point out to you. Looking at the top and saying, "Well I see some green. I see some brown and some other colors in it." This is just now coming out of dormancy. What we're really looking for has nothing to do with what you see on the top of the Sod and everything to do with the sod itself and the bottom side. So, let's take a piece and flip it over. Here is what you want to look for: these little tiny white legs or rhizomes or fibers that are about to bite into your soil. This is your root. This is what you are concerned about. When you see these nice white roots you know that you're you're likely dealing with a very healthy product.

One Arm Test

The next thing is what we'll call the one arm test.  If you take a piece of sod like this and it falls apart and shreds, you have what we call ‘cheap sod’. I see it a lot of times on commercial sites.  That means somebody didn’t spend a whole lot of money on that sod and sourced it from a farm that just doesn’t really care. This is why you’re going to pay a little bit more for products that we install. In this pallet, my goal is to be able to use about every single piece. Sure, from time to time, you’re going to get a piece that is not very good and you throw it away. But I want as close to zero as possible. If I go and buy garbage sod, I save $30 a pallet. but there's a good chance that I’m going to end up throwing away 10-20 pieces. Or worse case, I’m going to just put it in your yard. You looked at the bids and you say, "This guy has a lower bid." He came in and he did it all, but you have bad sod. So with me, you’re going to probably pay a little bit more. I’m going to be able to use every single piece, and I’m going to have that certainty that great sod shows up on my project. So, great sod gets installed at your house. So whether you’re a contractor or a consumer, make sure that your sod looks good when it shows up and that you’re sourcing from a reputable supplier.  You’re using the correct species for your area (in this case it’s a shade tolerance sod in a very shady area) so you can be successful from the beginning.