In the world of Good,Better and Best. Good would be the equivelent to Hydroseeding. Better would be the equivilent to Hydrosprigging and of course, best would have to be Sodding.
Most grasses are available in seed, which would allow you to hydroseeed. The high quality hybrid grasses usually can only be grown through a method called sprigging.
- Hand sprigging - The most common method and most practiced, is done by hand spreading pieces of grass spriggs and then coveriong with a layer of dirt. This method has been done successfully for years. The downside of this process are, many of the grass spriggs die from not being covered and do not get a chance to secure itself to the soil. Wind sometimes blows the spriggs away. Outcome, slower growth rate and high death rate to spriggs.
- Hydrosprigging - Is the process of taking the same spriggs, mixing it into a hydromulching machine with a high quality fiber mulch, fertilizer and water then spraying the mix on to the ground. There is really no downside to this process. If watered correctly your lawn will grow quickly and evenly. The mulching process acts as a type of bond for the spriggs and not only keeps it from flying away but adheres it to the soil and gives the grass nodes a higher rate and degree of survival.
- Valley Isle Sod Difference - At VIS we constantly strive to bring a better and faster growing product to our customers. In our process we take actual sod and run it through a special machine to shred the sod into spriggs giving you a complete grass not just little pieces. We use high quality fertilizers, root enhancers and mulch adhesives to aid in the growth and health of your lawn.
Watering & Care for Your New Hydrosprigged Lawn
Congratulations for choosing Valley Isle Sod to Hydrosprig your new lawn. With proper watering and care you will be enjoying a beautiful lawn for years to come. Some of the things which will be mentioned may not appear to be logical to you but is imperative to follow to have a beautiful, thriving lawn. Remember there are no magical remedies for a beautiful lawn, you must constantly monitor your sprigs during this first 10 days (minimum), or your lawn will dry and die.
For the first 10 (ten) days (minimum) you must keep the sprig’s CONSTANTLY MOIST! This gives the sprigged grass nodes time to take root. A good starting time would be 3 cycles per day at 25 minutes per station. As an example, if you have a total of 5 stations, starting times could be 6:00am, 10:00am and 2:00 pm. Running each station for 25 minutes you will have a total of 125 minutes for that cycle. Since there is a total of 240 minutes between each watering cycle (4 hours between each cycle), the remaining time for the second cycle (10am) to start is 115 minutes. You must watch station 1 to see how dry it gets before the second cycle starts. If it looks like it’s too dry, you must start the second cycle sooner. Remember the sprigs must be kept CONSTANTLY MOIST.
Once you see the sprig’s starting to grow, you can systematically start to reduce the time of your watering station. Example; Every week you can start to pull back the running time for each station by 5 minutes till you get to 10 minutes running time per station. This should put you at approximately 31 days. (Remember this is not an exact science your number of days may vary). By this time your sprigs should have runners coming out and your sprigs have now become the start of your new lawn. Over the next few weeks you can begin to cut not just the watering times but you would be able to cut the watering cycles. Around the 9th week your lawn should be ready for its first cutting. Remember all lawns vary by location, wind, sun, summer time, winter time. The above example was given assuming the grass was planted in the summer. Winter has shorter days thus the watering cycles will be different. Do not allow watering cycles to start after 4pm.
