8 SportsTurf | March 2014 www.sportsturfonline.com
I
have been employed in the turfgrass
industry for 40 years this year, and I am now con-
vinced I will go to my grave (or the crematorium) not
understanding sod transplant problems or lack thereof.
In most cases where the installation and post-installa-
tion care are done properly, there are no problems. I wish
that was always the case. But before you even talk about
maintenance, you must select the sod.
The standard in the industry is that the sod must be
grown on a sand to be transplanted onto a sand-based mix.
When you talk about a standard in the industry there are
usually legal ramifications that if you don't follow those
standards things don't work out they way they should. I
don't deny that using sand-grown sod is the preferred way
of sodding a sand-based field, but it often comes at a huge
expense to the owners. Let's face it, there really aren't too
many sod growers in this country that are growing their
product on a sand, much less a sand that is sized similarly
to what a field is built with. Therefore, sand-grown sod is
sometimes transported hundreds of miles to reach the in-
stallation site.
The fact is, I have probably seen at least as many prob-
lem fields where the "standard of the industry" is fol-
lowed as not. In some of those cases the problem could
be attributed to post-installation care. A new sand-based
field is often a challenge to sports turf managers without
experience with this type of field. There is definitely a
learning curve. Based on my experience doing the foren-
sic work on these problem fields, over-irrigation is often
the suspected cause (Figure 1). I would guess that there is
some element of fear that the mix will be droughty, that
fear leading to excessive irrigation. A properly designed
and built sand-based system should not be droughty, but
that is a topic for another article.
On the other hand, I have seen installations that
should have failed (based on our standard of the indus-
SAND-GROWN
SOD REVISITED
©
Figure 1.
Overwatering
can cause issues
even with sand-
grown sod.
Field Science | By Norman W. Hummel Jr., PhD
