My Zoysia Grass Adventure- Follow along
31 May 2009I have had a problem lawn in the front of my home since we built it in 2002. It only seems to be getting worse as time goes on. A few months ago a saw an ad in a magazine for Zoysia grass and how it was the most wonderful thing to happen since sliced bread. I did some research on Zoysia grass and found out a few things that kind of bothered me, like the fact that it turns yellow after the first frost and does not come back until ground temps reach 50 degrees. It also will spread to other areas so if you don’t want your neighbors yard to get it then you need to put some sort of barrier up.
Even after all of this I decided to try it but I wanted to keep it in a small contained area that I could control. My thinking is that after this area is filled I can determine what to do from there. If I like it, I’ll just use plugs from this area to do the rest of my yard. If I do not like it then I can dig it up and plant grass seed with not to much work. So, if you have been thinking about planting Zoysia grass at your home you may want to follow along with my adventure.
I decided to buy my grass from Zoysia Farms out of Maryland. They are the folks whose ad I had seen in the magazine so I figured I would give them the business. I did some searching on the internet and found their website but also ran into some other sites that had many negative things to say about the company. So, I guess this will also be my review on how Zoysia Farms stacks up against their website and magazine ad claims.
The area I chose to plant in Zoysia grass is the area between my driveway and my neighbors driveway, and the street and the sidewalk in front of my house. (I did talk to my neighbor before doing this as part of this area is on his property. He agreed to go along with it.)
I had read online that many of the people complained about the plugs being hard to cut and plant so I decided to just plant the whole chunk and get it established and then if I wanted I would use the free plugger to spread it around after that.
I’m getting a ahead of myself a little. I ordered my plugs online through the Zoysia farms website. I had calculated that I was trying to cover about 180 sq ft. I used their online calculator and said I wanted two plugs per sqare ft and the calculator said I would need 2 basic packs + 1 free pack (300 plugs) plus 1 basic pack of 100 plugs. That would give me 400 total and I needed 360 to cover 2 per sq ft.
I decided to up the order to the 4 basic pack plus 2 free and they would throw in the step on plugger for free. This was a total of 600 plugs. The total was $43.30 with shipping. I placed the order on May 14th and received a nice email saying that they shipped to Ohio on a regular basis and that my order would be filled the next time they shipped to Ohio. May 26th I received another email saying that they had shipped my order. I received my order on May 28th.
I opened the box and found pieces of sod basically. 4 pieces total and 1 of them was almost broken in half.
I was a little confused as to how the 4 pieces equal the 4 basic packs plus 2 free packs that I paid for but after reviewing the website they say that each pack divides into 150 1X1 squares so 4 X150 is 600. I think it is just a little marketing going on here. I also received the free step on plugger and a nice set of instructions that were very detailed. Since I was not going to plant the grass right away I set it outside in a place that would not get direct sunlight and watered it down as the instructions directed.
The 2nd thing I noticed was that I did not or could not see any of the scoring they talked about on their website that makes it easier to seperate the pieces. To me it looked like they just cut 4 pieces of sod and mailed it to me. Here is a picture of the bottom side of a piece of sod.
The instructions did clearly say in large print at the top, IF YOUR GRASS ARRIVES BROWN, DO NOT BE ALARMED so all of the negative comments I had seen on websites that started off with this complaint went right out the window as far as I was concerned.
The instructions also said to think of planting your grass as once in a lifetime. So, I knew that I should take the time and put out the effort to do a good job. If I were doing my whole yard I knew I would be in for quite a bit of work.
As mentioned earlier I had decided NOT to cut the pieces up into smaller pieces right away but to just plant the whole piece and then plug it after it was established.
I laid the sod down in the area I wanted to plant it and used a flat shovel to cut the sod around it. I then removed the piece and finished digging out the area.
I noticed there was quite of bit of small rock in the soil probably left over from when the house was built. The instructions clearly said not to plant in rocky soil so I kept digging until they were all out. I filled the hole back up to the proper lever with a mixture of top soil and miracle grow potting soil that we had left over from the flower planting a couple of weekends before. I soaked it real good with water, placed the zoysia sod in place and packed around it with more of the fresh dirt mixture to fill in the cracks on all sides and stepped on it to make sure it had good contact with the dirt underneath.
I planted the other 2 pieces of sod on each side of the tree. I watered them all well and plan to do so everyday for the next 3 weeks as the instructions say. I tossed the torn up 4th piece as I thought I had plenty to do the job already and did not want to mess with it.
The whole process took me about 2 hours to complete. I will be updating this blog to keep those who are following along informed on how it is coming along.
I hope this may help someone else who is curious about Zoysia grass and Zoysia farms. Please come back in a few weeks to see how my new grass is doing.
Here are a few more pictures to show what the area looked like before the Zoysia grass takes over.
As you can see the area is thin and some areas don’t seem to grow at all.
Here here is a close up of one of the sod pieces after it has been installed completely. As you can tell I left a little area around it as described in the instructions to keep out the competition.
Hopefully things will work out and this area will fill in and turn out to look nice. It has been a battle over the years for me. On a scale of 1 to 10 I would rate the experience so far as a 7. Most of the rating obviously comes from my experience with Zoysia Farms since that is all I have had other than the planting of the grass itself. My biggest complaint would be the quality of the order. Since I basically paid close to $40 for 4 small pieces of sod I kind of expected the pieces to be in tip top shape. Since one was torn I have to ding them for that. Only time will tell if the Zoysia grass will grow and if I have any problems how they will support me. Stay tuned….other than that, the order process and delivery process was fine.
If it works out the way I hope then I will have my own Zoysia grass to do the rest of my yard from this original order so will be getting off cheaper than I would have it I had ordered it all at once.
Please check back around mid June as I should have some growth by then hopefully and will have more pictures posted. Thanks for following along. Enjoy your summer.
11 Responses to “My Zoysia Grass Adventure- Follow along”
June 7th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
I planted my zoysia from the same company on 25 May. I cut my zoysia into plugs. Some plugs were 1″, some were bigger and some were smaller. I live in Maryland so there was an advantage on shipping time. My zoysia was still pretty green when I got it, although I didn’t plant it for about 4 days. Followed the directions for postponed planting. Planted the zoysia according to the directions. Since the planting, most of the plugs turned brown. About a week ago I noticed very small sprouts at the edges of most of the plugs. Not much else but I am excited to see growth this early. Have you seen any growth yet?
June 8th, 2009 at 8:37 pm
do not see anything yet. I will be doing a more in depth update in another week
February 7th, 2010 at 10:25 pm
No updates? This seems to be typical of people who say they are going to keep a blog of their progress growing zoysia. I’m looking at starting some zoysia in east central VA as soon as the weather warms but nobody posts updates beyond their first post anywhere i’ve looked. First impressions are important but what did it look like right before first frost?
February 10th, 2010 at 6:37 pm
David,
I have updated the post on Zoysia grass. I had taken the pics but failed to post them. They are there now if you would like to take a look.
March 17th, 2010 at 2:14 pm
Hi Mark,
I am interested in trying out zoysia as my neighbor’s yard is all weeds and making upkeep a real challenge. I was wanted to see your progress but am not seeing where I click to look at your newly posted pics.
Thanks,
Jennifer
March 29th, 2010 at 7:50 pm
Jen,
If you click on the Zoysia Grass link in the upper left column of the blog you will get a page that shows all of the Zoysia Grass posts. You can then select the post you want. Hope this helps.
Mark
April 14th, 2010 at 6:15 pm
hey does this stuff really work cause im looking in buying some for my yard what do you recommend
May 5th, 2010 at 11:58 am
So what happened? any updates??
July 27th, 2010 at 8:02 pm
I also purchased the plugs and planted less than 1 X 1 inch square. I got mine brown planted them in 1 foot apart. I watered the plugs for 21 days and the plugs never turned green. I called zozia farms. and the lady told me to continue for a total 41 days.
after 41 days all I saw was many brown plugs decaying and crab grass was taking over my entire front yard. I was so pissed off. I call the farm and gave them a piece of my mind. The lady said to test my soil ph and she replaced my order. The temp hit over 100 degrees and I felt this should kill the crab grass if i dont water it. Instead the grass just filled the entire lawn in the hottest days and bacame totally grean. My wife said . Mel I love this crab grass. Long story short. My plugs germinated at the roots and spread out to cover my entire lawn in about 50 days. The grass is course leafed and looks a little like crab grass. My neighbor constantly waters his grass morning and eve and his has weeds and burns easily.
I water my large lawn once every 3 to 4 days for abour 8 minutes and my grass if absolutely lush. My neighbor is envious. I looked like a retard destroying my lawn to plant crabgrass plugs. But now I am the Albert Einstein of my neighborhood.
In Conclusion: The farms has an excellent product and does honor their warranty. I was dumb and was expecting the grass to look like bluegrass with fine blades (it does not) I will call the farms and tell them they need to put a close up of the grass online.
July 27th, 2010 at 8:18 pm
Planting Tip to make life easy:
I went to home depot and got a 1 1/2 galvanized pipe cut 4 1/2 feet long.
the I purchased 6 bags of top soil.
I cut the grass as low to the ground as possable.
I wet the entire area.
Using the pipe: Raising the bottom above my knee I was able to punch 500 holes in my grass in less than 15 minutes. (much faster than their hole tool).
My wife Placed 1 hand full of top soil in front of every hole. this marks the hole. If I see a mound of top soil that means we did not plug the hole.
The top soil is used to fill the hole to the right depth so you are not looking for soil that is compressed.
After I plug the hole … Using my flat hand I level the top soil by wiping side to side with light pressure.
With this trick I was able to plug a very large area in one afternoon. I wish I had several people and a few pipes.
July 5th, 2011 at 8:57 am
I purchased 300 plugs back in the late spring/early summer of ’06. We only live 40 miles away but had the 1st batch shipped since it was fairly cheap shipping. The plugs arrived mostly on the brown (dormant?) side. We planted these in 1 year old MD sod. We cut them in 4″x4″ plugs because this was the size of our trowel blade. Filled holes with store bought lawn soil and added plugs. Watered as the directions said and that was it. By the end of the summer EVERY plug had green blades growing. Other than the green blades there was not much growth for the first year. My guess is it was due to the sod shading out the plugs as I always cut the grass kind of high. The second year (’07) we fell pray to grubs which seemed to only effect the sod. We over seeded the affected areas with spotty success. It was during this time the zoysia took off. Without other turf to fight for territory, this stuff moves out. It’s interesting to watch the runners progress. In 5 years it has crept across almost half of our small yard (12x20ft)
In ’07 since the grubs got us, we added 300 more plugs on the oppsite side of the driveway with similar results.