Different Kinds of Sod

Sod

• Sod provides you with an instant green lawn instead of waiting for grass seed to germinate and grow. Sod is grown on sod farms around the country. When you place an order for a specific sod, the farm typically harvests the sod and ships it to your location within one or two days. Sod has a short lifespan and must be planted as soon as possible after receiving it.

Warm-Season

• Warm-season grasses are good for the southern regions. When the weather cools down in the South, the grass turns brown and greens up again when the temperatures warm up. In the South, many homeowners seed their green lawns with rye grass during the cooler season so they have green grass during the winter. In fall, the rye grass goes dormant and the regular lawn greens up. Warm-season varieties include centipede, St. Augustine, carpet, buffalo, Bermuda and Bahia grass.

Cool-Season

• Regions with harsh winters and mild drought conditions during the summer are located in the northern regions. Because the winters are cold, you need to use cool-season grasses. Bentgrass, Kentucky bluegrass, red fescue, annual ryegrass, tall fescue and perennial ryegrass are cool-season sods.

Transitional-Zone Grasses

• The region where neither warm- nor cool-season sod grows successfully or uniformly is called the transitional zone. The transitional zone includes Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky and parts of West Virginia, North Carolina and Virginia.

  In Missouri, West Virginia and Kentucky, cool-season tall fescue, perennial ryegrass and Kentucky bluegrass grow very well. Tall fescue is good for the Texas Panhandle, Alabama, northern Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee, but in the lower elevations of these states, warm-season grasses do very well. Zoysia and thermal blue grass grow in the transitional zone as well.