How to Save Dying Sod (10 Tips)

Whether it’s been 2 weeks since your sod was unrolled and placed over your yard or you just celebrated the 3-month mark, dying sod has the same usual causes and solutions. I’ve seen sod lawns go from refusing to root in the spring to 80% dead, dry, and brown in the heat of summer to healthy and lush by late fall. What made all the difference was consistency. Having a consistent plan is what you need to succeed with sod.

How to Bring Back Dying Sod – The Short Answer

If your sod is dying, you need to identify why, how far gone it is, come up with a treatment protocol, and then follow through with it. Sod that has gone yellow or brown in patches and even a lawn that is more brown than green still has a chance of being saved with the right steps.

How to Tell If Your Sod Is Dying

Before you attempt to save your sod, you want to first identify exactly what the problem is. To do that, you should take stock of the following signs your sod is dying or in danger of doing so.

Color

Color is the first and most immediate thing you may notice if your sod is unhealthy.

• Brown – A brown lawn is often a dry lawn, but this dryness may come from more than a lack of water. There are, however, several more reasons why your lawn may be turning brown.
• Yellow – Yellow grass typically indicates a lack of nutrients or an overabundance of water and indicates one of the many problems this can create. To learn more about the causes of a yellow lawn, you can read this article that answers the question, “Why is my sod turning yellow?”
• Dusty – A dusty or gray lawn can indicate a mildew problem.
• Sudden Bright Green – A sudden bloom of bright green, especially after many days of warm, heavy rain can indicate a root problem and a potential mold infestation. Excessive moisture pooling around the roots of your sod may cause them to swell and make them susceptible to break down by mold and other microorganisms. This breakdown will lead to a sudden uptake in nitrogen and “greening up” and then, just as suddenly, your sod may turn sludgy and yellow-brown.

Texture

The texture of your sod is the next clue as to exactly what is wrong with it.

• Dry – A dry lawn may be a common occurrence between waterings, but it’s when the earth beneath the sod is completely dry and dusty that there is cause for concern. If this is the case, you want to make sure your lawn isn’t hydrophobic first. If it’s not, you need to water your lawn more deeply.
• Crispy or Brittle – If the grass in each sod section or even a few patches is crispy or brittle, you need to water more deeply or more frequently, depending on the state of the sod’s roots.
• Curled – Sod, where the blades curl when they are supposed to be straight, could indicate chemical exposure, a lack of nutrients, or too many nutrients, depending on the color. For example, curled yellow blades typically mean more fertilizer is needed while green curled blades with dark brown tips may indicate overfeeding and a lack of moisture to balance this out.
• Slimy – A slimy grass texture is the last thing you want with sod. This is the texture that can be most difficult to correct and that means the most damage has been done. To get here, your sod would need to be over-watered and infested with mold or fungus.

Loose or No Connection to the Soil

The last thing you need to determine before making a diagnosis about the health of your sod would be how well it has rooted, if it has begun to root, or if its original roots are dying. To do this, you will need to find the corner of a section of sod and, while firmly grasping the blades, attempt to pull the grass up with increasing force. If it feels well stuck to the ground, do not forcefully break off the roots. If this is the case, this is all of the information you need.

However, if there is little or no resistance as you pull up the sod, you need to look a little closer. First, take a look at the ground under the sod. Is it dry and dusty? Moist like you would want it to be? Or is there standing water? Does it smell like dirt, mold, or rot?

Next, look at the roots of the pulled-up sod. Do they look the same as the day the sod was installed? If so and it has been 4 weeks or less, this is normal. Have small roots begun to extend into or toward the soil? In 5 weeks or less, this is normal. Do the roots look slimy or smell like rot? This could indicate a mold or mildew problem. Are there far more roots than there were, but they have begun to curl and mat around themselves? This could indicate a soil compaction issue.

How to Save Dying Sod + Make it Flourish

Once you know what signs your dying sod is exhibiting, you can go ahead and develop a treatment plan. Below are all of the steps you may need to take to get your sod back to a healthy state. Not all steps will apply to each condition, but this is the general order you may want to go in, to come up with your treatment protocol.

1) Appraise the Current State of Your Sod

The first step to saving your sod is knowing what went wrong. Above you can find a list of all of the signs your sod might be exhibiting as well as links to further discussions on what certain colors might mean. Use the information you have gathered to narrow down the list of things that may have gone wrong with your sod.

2) Check for Standing Water and Encourage Drainage

If your sod was dry as a bone, skip this step. If there was any standing water or if there is standing water for more than 40 minutes after each standard or deep watering session, you need to increase the drainage in your lawn. This should have been done in the prep work before your sod was installed.

Now, however, your sod may be too fragile to take up and re-install. Instead, you can try to use a spiked roller or fork to increase drainage or gently lift up each piece of sod, scratch up the soil, and work in sand or another medium that will improve drainage and loft. The same process should be used for standing water, with the roller or fork being used first and the soil amendment used as a last resort.

3) Flush Out Excess Chemicals and Fertilizer

If there was no excess moisture and you believe that there was an over-application of chemicals or fertilizer, you’re going to need to flush it out. This means almost flooding your yard with constant watering for 2 hours a day for 2 or 3 days. This should help push any excess fertilizer or chemical residue further into the ground or help with the breakdown process. After, assess your sod’s moisture levels. If there is standing water, do not add more water until this moisture has dissipated.

4) Press Out Air Pockets

Air pockets are one of the only things that can only happen with sod and never happen with a directly sown lawn. Often, professional sod installation includes a step where a heavy roller or press is used to flatten the sod to the ground level, forcing out any air. A similar roller is offered to rent or buy that fills with water and can be pushed around the yard. If you suspect you have air pocket issues, it may be worth acquiring and using one of these rollers.

5) Create a Watering Plan and Adjust for Treatments and Climate

Watering your sod on a schedule is necessary if you want it to remain healthy. A typical schedule for healthy sod, from installation through rooting, looks like this:

First Week – Water daily for 20 minutes 2x/day

Second Week – Water daily for 20 minutes 1x/day, every other day

Third Week – Water 2x/week for 30 minutes each session

Fourth Week – Water once each week for 45 minutes each session

By the end of the first month, the idea is to encourage the sod to gradually reach deep into the soil to get more water and nutrients, without depriving it of the easy water it needs at first. If you live in a hotter climate or your grass seems to be drying out faster, try increasing the watering times rather than the frequency.

6) Adjust Nutrient Levels

If you have yellow sod, curled sod, or you have had to move or cut your sod recently, you may need to replenish its nutrients. The best way to do this is to use a light foliar or liquid feed. To avoid more damage, always ensure that you do not use more than the manufacturer recommends. Double-check your dilutions before application and apply the solution as early as possible in the morning rather than during the day for best results.

7) Encourage Root Growth

Once you have solved water level, air, and nutrient issues, your sod should have the basics it needs to recover. Now you need to make sure it stays healthy by encouraging root growth. To get this process started, you’ll need to implement the type of deep watering plan mentioned above and withhold any additional liquid or foliar feed. The rooting process can take between 2 and 5 weeks, depending on the damage to your sod.

8) Take Stock of Light Conditions and Adjust to Suit

Light is essential when it comes to keeping your sod healthy. The more shade there is, the more likely a fungal infection is to set in. If there is a lot of shade over your sod, consider pruning tree branches to let more light in. If there are some spots where the sod is dying off in the deep shade, you may need to seed a more shade-tolerant variety over the sod and accept that the grass type the sod is made up of may not grow well here.

9) Treat Fungal Infections

If, after solving any issues that may have led to fungal infections, you are still having some problems you may need to apply a fungicide to your sod. Follow the manufacturer’s directions.

10) Allow the Sod to Rest

The final thing to remember when you are treating sod for anything is that it will need time to rest and recover. This means no walking, driving, or mowing during the recovery phase. The one exception to this is that the lawn should be mown with freshly sharpened blades if it gets taller than 3.5”. At anything above this height, the sod may get uneven sunlight or may more easily trap unnecessary moisture.

Can Dying Sod Be Saved?

With the right care, attention, and treatment dying sod can be saved. However, depending on what exactly is going on and how long it has been going on, more or less of the sod will be able to be rescued.

Still, in most situations, enough sod should be saved that the lawn will fill itself in over time. It may take longer than if nothing had gone wrong, but even with all the prep work done perfectly, it’s hard to account for the weather or life circumstances that may prevent a new sod lawn from getting something that it needs.