Sod

The cold season is upon us. It was a chilly 70 degrees today in Houston – a few warmer at the golf course. Don was determined to not use any sod at all for the grassing -- if we didn't have the rainiest year ever I'm sure he would have succeeded.

Sod is more costly as compared with spriging -- many modern courses sod the entire golf course at an expense between 1/2 & 1 Million US dollars (sprigging is a small fraction of that expense). When sprigging we also control the plant’s growing medium, either sand or sandy loam and all the nutrients – sod farms usually grow their grass in Texas gumbo soils – although our sod farm is top notch. The sprigs also get trained from an early age towards our final maintenance practices -- deep infrequent watering. (Golf turf bermuda grasses are either sprigged or sodded -- there are no seeds)

Well with only a bunch of grassing days left it was decided we'd need some sod to finish. It looks very much like it will be completely grassed by early next week -- "grassed out" is the industry term. I'm still rooting for an Indian Summer to keep everything growing.

In the picture above the crew is sodding around a drain basin. Water collects at the basin while watering -- it is too wet during the heavier demands of growing in the sprigs. The sod gives the area a great big head start. The black plastic pipe is the basin before trimming. The pipe is perforated to allow water in and keep soil infiltration to a minimum -- this one flows back into our irrigation lake. After sodding we trim it and install a small green color drain grate.

Congratulations everyone. I’ll be bringing a lot more beers on my next couple visits.