OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums General Discussion Forum Lawn Care & Maintenance Alternate Methods for Starting a New Lawn

Following on from Mod BB's Playground thread, I thought I would add my experiences with planting my back lawn.

I wanted to plant Santa Ana couch but was looking for a better cheaper method than using roll out instant turf. I found that instant turf is not that uniform in thickness and there is a lot of work involved in getting the surface super smooth. I started researching how putting and bowling greens are planted and I came across a method called sprigging or stolonization.

Essentially every stolon and rhizome is its own individual plant and can grow and spread by itself. Think of a turf roll as a thousand plants all growing together.

This is what I came up with after 100's of hours of research;

Soil Prep
Same as any other new lawn, spraying out old lawn, cultivation, top soil, home made lawnlevel for initial leveling, sufficient time for the soil to settle , more leveling, more leveling, more leveling.

Irrigation
An absolute necessity if you wish to sprig. I went automated as I had an old controller that was adequate for my needs. Irrigation schedule; Week 1-2 (8 times p/d for 2 mins), week 3-4 (4 times p/d 5 mins), week 5 (twice per day for 10 mins), week 6 (once per day 15mins). Obviously if it rained I did not irrigate and if temperatures were high with dry winds I would manually adjust an extra cycle here and there where necessary. Once full coverage has been achieved you can start to implement a deep watering schedule.

Fertilization
I went with 2 different fertilizers for grow in. Since you need to irrigate initially at 5-6+ times per day for short intervals most nutrients will be leached away from where it is needed; in the top inch of soil. So I went with a straight starter fertilizer and urea. One week I applied the starter fert (11-11-11) at 25g/m2, the next week the urea (46-0-0) at 15g/m2. I actually split the applications during each week; once on Saturday at half rate, then the other half on Wednesday. I did this as to not risk burning the new shoots with excess nitrogen and to keep a steady flow of nutrients rather than a feast or famine situation. It was a challenge initially to micro-fertlize these small amounts but I made a measured out a map of the area and weighed out the amounts with digital scales then manually broadcast the fertilizer in small areas.

Turf Selection
All warm season C4 grasses can be sprigged as effectively each stolon or rhizome is its own individual plant. It is obviously more beneficial to sprig a variety with an aggressive growth habit as it will fill in more quickly. These C4 grasses send rhizomes below the soil and solons above the ground. The plant will send out a root at each node of the stalk. The more dwarf varieties of turf have a shorter distance between each node and send out more shoots and roots per equivalent length of stem. Turf grass that has been mown regularly and relatively short adapt into a prostrate growth habit. This will also help to shorten the internodal length. This is essential to consider when thinking about stolonization and sourcing your sprigs. Yes you can go out and buy sod and chop it up or pull it apart. I did this, and here is where I would do things differently next time;
1) Turf form a turf farm still has dirt on it. Not only does this make it a really messy job to chop up, it also makes it very labour intensive.
2) Much of the turf stems are not going to be flat with you chop it up by hand. They end up kind of wiry. What this means is when you broadcast spread it out some parts have minimal ground contact and are not going to strike. These bits will needs to be covered with more top dressing than others and easily come loose when a bird goes pecking or the wind picks up. If you plan on this method I would recommend a disc roller. This machine will mix in these pieces of turf into the top layer of soil then you need to roll again after with a flat roller to ensure the ground is flat.
3) If you decide to put the turf through some sort of chipper or shredder (I tried this once my hands were about to fall off) it will do a great job of cutting it up for you, however the stolons and rhizomes are much smaller and thus will have less numbers of nodes per piece to root. Expect slower coverage from this method.

What you need is the machine that actually harvests and chops the top layer of the turf all in one go. If you can source these sprigs from your location you are good to go. The sprigs are usually supplied by the bag or bushel. I have seen lots of websites and videos in North America for sprigs sold by the bag, but these seem more for golf green sprigging with dwarf varieties of couch.

One option that I will consider if I do this again is approaching a golf course, bowling green or sports oval for scarified/verticut stolons. I did call a few courses here in Adelaide but no one seemed that helpful. Perhaps next time I might consider beer as some sort of commodity for brokering such a deal. The beauty of getting scarified fairway stolons is that it is well maintained turf that will sit nicely on the ground and won't need lots of topdressing to make it root.

Planting
Ideally you want to be planting in mid/late spring. You need daytime temperatures of at least 25C and night temps above 15C to see any real growth. You can sprig in temps less than this but coverage will be slower. I ended up hand-weeding the site during grow-in. Don't forget you have conditions that give your sprigs the best chance to grow; unfortunately this is also provide a great environment for weeds.
Apply your starter fertiliser at the normal rate as if you were seeding or sodding around 2-3 days prior to planting. I waited a full week after planting before starting my grow-in fertilization program.

I broadcast spread my sprigs by hand; however some areas had more sprigs than others. This is just trial and error until you have an even coverage. I sprigged a small area with sprigs that I put through a chipper and whilst it was much easier to broadcast, but the coverage was somewhat behind the rest of the lawn.

The sprigs can die pretty quickly if not kept moist, so be careful if the ambient temperatures are high on the day of planting.
At this point you can either use a disc roller to cut the sprigs in, or use a flat roller and a light top-dressing. I would recommend topdressing with a soil that is similar to your topsoil. I went with sharp sand, which seemed to cover well. If there is insufficient topdressing material, the chances of the sprig taking fall dramatically. A broadcast spreader with a suitable hopper works well, but you might need several passes to build up sufficient topdressing material.

Water in well, just to the point of runoff and start with your grow-in irrigation. Be careful not to over irrigate as the sprigs can be washed away. My irrigation was trial and error, as I initially started with 5 min intervals which were too much. Different irrigation and spray body types will distribute water differently so I would make sure that you observe how the ground looks after each cycle.

Mowing
I commenced mowing at about 4 weeks, at around 15mm with a SB45 reel mower. Soil needs to be fairly dry to enable mowing so plan your irrigation around mowing. Don't let the grass grow too tall as we want to induce lateral growth of the stolons to cover any bare areas. Continual additions of sand or topdressing mix seem to help fill in the bars spots quickly. I slowly lowered the mowing height to 10mm for around a month, but in the end I couldn't keep up with the mowing frequency. I maintained at 12mm for about another month, but I raised the height again to 15mm. Yard is always double cut, normally every other day.
So from planting to around 90% coverage was about 6 weeks. A few spots took a bit longer to fill in, but I planted on October 1st and had a full dense lawn by Christmas. What I have now is an extremely uniform yard that will never scalp from high spots and hopefully never need extensive leveling

Cost wise for me this was about 25% of the cost of buying turf and installing it yourself. I did all the labour work myself so this helped with keeping costs down.

Obviously the idea of rolling out fresh new turf gives instant gratification; but in my opinion nothing beats the pleasure of knowing that the grass in your yard was grown by you from a few rolls of turf!

Pics to follow;

Hi Simrice,Good read on the stolonizing method.I work on bowling greens and basically follow your method.We use stolonizing so were not buying 1500sq metre's of turf.But this method allows us to start with zero thatch (excess thatch the main reason for replanting).The only differences are the use of more accurate levelling methods and I cover the entire green with tightly stretched bird netting to hold stolons in place from wind and storm damage and this allows us also to regularly light roll during the first ten days to keep stolons pressed close to the moist soil.I grow the grass the year before on the green surrounds and use a turfcutter to harvest the turf before putting it thru a garden shredder.I find scarified cuttings a little to fine with a lower survival rate.Once planted roots start to be seen in 72 hours.I have a replant planned for early November and will take some pics of the process and post up here

G'day sb30inch,

Nice of you to add the addition of the netting. When I do this again I will put some shade cloth down for the very reason that you can roll it afterward and keep the stolons in contact with the soil. It was a bit of a risk undertaking something that there isn't a huge amount of information available for your average home owner, and I will definitely refine the method next time around.

What grass type do you use on your greens? I hear that Santa Ana is still quite popular for greens, but there is also some ultra dwarfs around that can handle mowing heights down near 2.5mm.

Pics;







Christmas 2014

Fast forward 2 years

Hi Simrice,You have done a great job on the stolonizing,the final result looks first class. 6 weeks is great result to get coverage.In our area(sub tropical)we use a hybrid couch"Tift-dwarf"Our final mowing height is 1.3mm but we have to be thinking of the desired surface for bowls.This puts the grass under great stress with inherent problems.I would never cut a general grass area this short.My green surrounds are cut at 10mm.Yes the net is good but ten days is about all you need otherwise you pull up the newly struck stolons.The other good reason is I like the control of hand held watering and we can drag hoses over the net.

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