Half the Sod Didn't Take on a Boston Job. Here's What We Did.

We delivered a load of sod to a backyard in Boston this summer. It came off the truck in perfect shape, and the evening it went down it looked like the photo at the top of this post. Seams still showing, every roll green.

A few weeks later, about half of it was dead.

That is not a sentence most sod companies would put on their own website. We're putting it here for two reasons. One, how a job goes sideways tells you more about who you're buying from than a hundred jobs that go fine. Two, the customer's own review of how this ended is now sitting at the top of our Google page, and we'd rather you read the whole story than just the ending.

What we delivered

The customer was leveling his own backyard and called us for help picking a grass and figuring out how much he needed. We walked him through it, cut the order fresh, and drove it to Boston. It was perfect when he got it. Not "pretty good for a long ride." Perfect. He got it down, got water on it, and the install-day photos are the proof.

Then it started to thin

Somewhere in the first few weeks, parts of the lawn started going backwards. Not all of it. Some sections stayed thick and green. Others thinned out until you could see the thatch and soil through the blades.

Then the dead zones.

We went looking for the reason

When sod dies in patches like this, the first thing you do is lift an edge. Sod that's establishing should fight you after a couple of weeks. The roots have knitted into the base and it doesn't want to come up. This sod came up like a rug.

Here's the honest part: nobody landed on one answer. Not us, not the customer. The sod was right when it arrived, and the section that took proves it wasn't the sod. Our best read is water. Either too much, which drowns new roots and invites fungus, or not enough, which leaves them dry an inch down like the photo above. Both kill sod. Both look about the same from the deck. And on a freshly leveled yard with new fill, it's easy to do one in the low spots and the other on the high spots without knowing it.

What we did

We sent him another pallet. No charge.

Was it our fault? No. Was it our sod? Yes, and that's the point. When someone puts our name on their lawn and is out there with a hose trying to make it work, we're not going to hand him an invoice for the second round and a lecture about watering. About 50 pieces had died. We sent 60, to be safe. The pallet landed in Boston on a Friday and he had every piece down before dark, himself, same as the first round.

We want to be straight about one thing, because a post like this can get read the wrong way: this is not a guarantee. Sod is a living crop. Once it's off the truck, it's in your hands and your hose's hands, and we say that plainly on our Before You Order page. What this is is a judgment call, and we've been making them for thirty years. When a customer is clearly doing his part, we'd rather eat a pallet than win an argument.

The review

Here's how he described it, in his own words on Google:

"For reason none of us could figure out." That's accurate, and we're leaving it that way. We'd rather tell you we don't know than invent a reason that makes us look smarter.

Ordering sod in Boston or anywhere in Massachusetts

We deliver across Massachusetts, and this job is why we tell every out-of-state customer the same three things:

• Have your base ready before the truck shows up. Sod sitting on a pallet in July is already losing.
• Water the day it goes down, then keep it damp, not flooded and not dry, for two weeks. Pull a corner every couple of days. When it fights you, you're winning.
• Check your town's watering rules before you order. A lot of Massachusetts towns restrict summer watering, and new sod doesn't care what day of the week it is. We keep a running list: Massachusetts water restrictions by town.