Well, you have been getting advice that conflicts with what we have learned here over the years.

You say you want to do everything right. Here are the lessons learned from years of reading Internet gardening forums.

1. NEVER rototill in preparation for laying seed or sod.
2. You can sod any day of the year.
3. Palmetto is a relatively poor variety. Floratam is the one you really want.
So that bad news is that you wasted time and money preparing the soil. The good news is you can still have the best looking lawn in the neighborhood starting from where you are.

Before the sod arrives, go out and water the soil completely. Water for at least an hour. This will settle the soil that is currently fluffy. After the soil settles some, level it again using a rake or filling in with sand/soil. Try not to raise the surface of the soil by blanket top dressing. All you want to do is fill the holes. Then water it again to settle the new surface. You can get the most level surface by dragging a piece of weighted chain link fence over the soil. That tool will loosen the high spots and drag high soil into the low spots that you cannot see. Then after your sod goes down, rent a water fillable roller to push the sod down to the surface of the soil. Roots from the sod will not grow through the air to reach the soil. The sod has to be touching everywhere.

Since you cannot afford a sprinkler, go to Home Depot and get a Vigoro water hose timer. Then get as many oscillating sprinklers as you need to cover your lawn all at the same time. Then go to Sears and get Craftsman brand hoses to connect to the timer and the sprinklers (Sears' hoses do not leak at the fittings if you tighten them properly). You might need splitters to feed all the hoses out of the timer. I like the big green and black ones from Lowe's. Set your timer to go off every day, morning, noon, and night, for 10 minutes each time. You need to do this so the sod will knit to the underlying soil. If you do this for three weeks, the roots will be in and you're off to the races.

After the roots are in you can back off on the watering. Ultimately you want to back off to watering once every week in the summer heat and once or twice a month the rest of the year. Use your timer to do this. I was going to lose my lawn this year until I got the timer rigged up.

Mulch mow St Augustine at the mower's highest setting. Weld the adjusters in place so that your well meaning brother in law doesn't come by some day to do you a favor and he scalps your nice lawn. St Aug never needs to be scalped. Just mowing at the highest setting will give you the best looking lawn in the neighborhood.

I fertilize with organic fertilizer 5 times per year on the federal holidays. I start on Washington's Birthday and end on Thanksgiving. If you use synthetic you can follow the same schedule except skip 4th of July...and also don't do the first one until after you have mowed real grass for the second time in the spring.

If you don't want to spend the money on new hoses, cut the male ends of your current hoses off and replace them with the black plastic repair ends from Lowe's. The stamped brass fittings are the worst. The Sears brass fittings are slightly better. I really prefer the black plastic male fittings for all my hoses. They seal tight every time.

Hey,

Thanks! Great response! I appreciate all of your time! Good news is I already did most of what you said. I had to till because my soil was so hard that nothing would have grown in it. Then, later today I did the watering and flattening, etc. I had read about that after I posted and went and rented a roller and went to town. I have everything you suggested already except the timer and the splitters. So I will make a trip again to Lowes tonight. I have all new Sears Craftsman hoses, so I am set there. I hate to hear Palmetto is not so good. Oh well, too late to do anything about that.

I am glad to hear you say to mow at highest setting because that is what I was already doing. No need to worry about the brother-in-law. He lives 265 miles away and won't go near a lawn mower anyway - haha! Seems as though us girls in the family have taken on all the yard work and usually do a pretty good job most of the time!

Ok, help mo out here. If you were not able to water your last lawn enough to keep it alive, what makes you think anything will be different now?

I've lived here for 5 years. 4 of those years I had a fabulous lawn. This year I had some unfortunate life happenings and job issues that kept me from being able to keep up with my lawn. Now that I have those things under control, I can get other things back in order. Also, as the other person suggested, I am going to resort to watering timers so that when I do have to work longer hours, I can use the timers and not have to miss watering for long periods of time. So watering wasn't the ultimate issue. It was a result of the issue. The issue was that I got slapped with unfortunate life happenings - it happens to the best of us. Thank goodness only my lawn suffered. I managed to keep everything else going.

The other good thing about the Craftsman hoses is that once you have the good connectors tightened, you can leave the faucet on for weeks so the timers can work. The fitting you really have to watch out for is the female end. If you get a leak in a brass female connector, the water leak will erode the brass and you will never ever again be able to stop the leak. The way to keep that from happening is to fix the male side with the plastic or solid brass fittings. The cheapo stamped brass fittings cut into the rubber washer making it impossible to seal tightly. The end of the male side must be perfectly flat to make the seal correctly. To take hose connections to the ultimate step, use O-rings instead of the flat washers that come with the hoses. You'll have to take a female fitting into a hardware store, find the O-rings in a little metal box, and try some to find the one that fits snugly. I bought about a dozen of them once I found them but I've never had to replace even one so only get enough for your current hoses.

Here is the water timer I use. It cost $40 and is only sold at Home Depot. It is okay - certainly not the most sophisticated timer I've ever seen. My watch has a better one. The biggest problem with this one is every time you want to change one of your programmed times, it deletes all of your programming. So you have to remember to reprogram the entire thing every time you hit the Program button. The programming is very flexible, though. I wanted to water for 5 hour period but it will only go up to 3 hours. So I set it to stop watering at 6am and start again at 6:01am.

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This is the splitter I like. They sell three that look alike. One is metal. I don't use it for the reason stated above. The other two are plastic like this one, and I do like the plastic hose connectors. One is larger diameter than the other one. I like the larger one - seems more sturdy and might give better flow.

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Ok as long as you have the time and means to keep it watered. I gorw a bit of Palmetto at the sod farm, but considering giving up, just does not hold up to the heat and drier conditions here in north TX.

I suspect your former lawn was Floartam because that is the most popular in your area. Palmetto selling point is it is more cold and shade tolerant than most other varieties of SA. However it is not near as drought tolerant as Floratam, and freezing weather is not a concern in Houston.

Just a follow-up -- everything is going fine so far. All of my sod is A-OK!!! Not even one square has died. I was shocked when it was delivered. I was told by the company that the sod pieces would be 16" X 24". Much to my surprise, they were 24" X 48"! You might think that is great. But hold on - I am female and was the only one doing this sod job. Keep in mind, this was very fresh sod - obviously still moist from several days of rain before they harvested it and brought it to me. Those pieces were H-E-A-V-Y, to say the least!!! Two pallets of them!!! But I did it all in about 8 hours. Trimmed everything up and everything. I am keeping the watering schedule and everything seems to be going just as planned. But I will say that if I ever have to sod a lawn again, I will try and save up the money to have it done unless I have a lot of help. That was a lot for a one man - or should I say, one woman - job!!! Thanks for all of the input! It really helped and I hope that I will not have any more problems! Let us just hope it takes root and things move right along!

Hi Prissyrabbit,

How is your palmetto sod doing? I've been reading about palmetto sod recently and have been searching for results and your post came up. It's been close to 3 years since you put yours down and your results could help in my decision.
Thank you in advance!