Installing freshly farmed turf is often a great first step in getting a healthy, luscious lawn in your back yard as quickly as possible. Rather than waiting for seed to germinate and grow, purchased sod gives you clean cut, professionally developed grass straight from the field, ready to be installed the same day.
But when it comes to buying sod online, there can be a confusing number of retailers to choose from. And how do you know which type of grass to buy?
The trick with buying sod is often to go local. Good quality sod is a living thing and doesn’t always travel particularly well. To have it transported properly over long distances could also land you with hefty delivery fees, since long haulage often requires specialized transport, including refrigeration and irrigation.
Local sod producers, however, are better placed to deliver you fresh cut turf straight from the local area. Reputable sod growers will also be experienced at producing grass that thrives in your particular climate.
With that in mind, where can you go online to find the best sod for you? Today, we’ve gathered a few retailers who distribute across the States, as well as some more local producers serving particular regions. All of these sellers and distributors are knowledgeable and specialized, with online tools that can help you to decide which type of turf is best for you.
Sod Solutions
We’ll start with a nationwide distributor that’s unlikely to be beaten when it comes to the sheer range of products on offer.
Sod Solutions doesn’t grow the grass themselves, but they work with private farmers and academic researchers to source and supply the best turf to customers and landscapers.
Their website comes with a detailed sod selection tool that helps you find the best product for you, depending on your location, climate, and individual grass needs.
Once you’ve set your location, the filter then allows you to order different products by ranking the importance of various characteristics. This means that, if finding a disease resistant strain is a priority, you can set it as such. You can also rank suggested species by their levels of shade, drought, and wear tolerance, as well as how much maintenance they’re deemed to need in terms of watering and fertilizer.
Sod Solutions also distribute a weekly ‘Sod University’ Newsletter, providing grass and lawn maintenance tips for hobby gardeners as well as horticultural professionals. They also produce detailed maintenance guides for specific products and grass types.
West Coast Turf
A leading figure among Southwest sod producers, West Coast Turf offer more than 30 varieties of turf, grown in various farms across California and Nevada.
West Coast Turf are the proud suppliers of sod to a number of famous sporting venues, including the LA Dodger’s Stadium, the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, and Oracle Park in San Francisco. These premium clients have led the company to refer to themselves as ‘The Home of Super Bowl Sod’.
However, they’re not only first choice for athletics’ personnel or golf course superintendents. West Coast Turf also market themselves as providers of high quality sod to the discerning homeowner market, delivering fresh turf to customers throughout California, Arizona, and Nevada.
They also mention that they’re capable of making deliveries further afield via refrigerated trucks, although customers outside of their usual range need to contact the company directly to discuss shipping options.
American Sod Farms
Staying on the West Coast for the time-being, American Sod Farms market themselves as being California’s premier sod producer.
They tailor themselves more clearly towards the home consumer market, specifically in the SoCal and San Diego area, though have also provided turf for larger projects, such as municipal parks and athletics grounds.
Their website contains a straightforward turf selector tool helping you to determine the best grass species for your climate and shade levels.
Having been first established in 1978, the firm have a long and impressive history growing and supplying good quality turf for local communities in the arid South West.
Northeast Nursery
We now jump to the other side of the country, to a supplier also proud to have served local communities for more than 30 years, this time throughout New England.
Northeast Nursery have been equipping gardeners, landscaping professionals, and homeowners with the tools and turf they need to keep their outdoor spaces thriving for decades. They’re staffed by a roster of professional sod producers, golf course supervisors, irrigation specialists, and certified horticulturalists.
Their main products are the New England Grown Bluegrass and the popular Black Beauty Tall Fescue. The former is a fast repairing and resilient species, great for high traffic areas with plenty of footfall. The Fescue is a drought tolerant variety that performs well in soil with poor nutrition and low PH, and ideally suited to the North Western climate.
Korby Sod
This Colorado based grower produce three main types of turf, perfectly suited to customers in their primary catchment areas – Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, and New Mexico.
Their Texas Hybrid Bluegrass is a drought resistant variety requiring less water than some of their other premium blends and is commonly recommended for backyards and high-wear areas.
For a more decorative finish or sporting surfaces, their Kentucky Bluegrass is a recommended option. They also offer the popular Tall Fescue variety, also known for its drought resistance and resilience even when layered on top of poor quality soil.
Their website also comes with an easy to read comparison guide, helping you see the main characteristics of each of their three main turf options alongside one another.
Central Sod Farms
From their initial inception as a small farm in Wheatland, Illinois back in 1976, Central Sod Farms have now evolved into a premium supplier of turf across Chicago, the Mid-West and parts of the East Coast.
Their farms and stores are positioned around two distinct hubs, the first in the Chicago area and the second in Maryland.
Like many local sod producers in that region of the country, Kentucky Bluegrass and Tall Fescue are the main varieties on offer, having been long proven as some of the best suited to those East Coast and mid-West climes.
Central Sod’s Maryland farms also produce and ship Tahoma bermudagrass, a warmer season variety ideal for sports turf, high-quality lawns, and golf courses.
Professional Turf Growers
Based in Sumas right on the Canadian-border, this Washington state grower serves customers of the Pacific North West with turf primed for that particular climate.
Their most popular product is a ryegrass and fescue blend. It has a great barefoot feel due to its fine blades, but remains resilient in the face of wear as well as disease.
Their premium fescue blend is slightly more expensive by the square foot, but requires less watering and stands up better to drought.
Super Sod
We finish up with a turf giant of the South. Super Sod have dozens of stores servicing Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and the Carolinas, with ten farms producing a wide variety of sod products for various climate needs.
Despite the breadth of their operation, Super Sod pride themselves on the fact that they’re not simply a middle-man, but dedicated turf growers. Their company combines the expertise and passion of specialist farmers with the reach and accessibility of a regional store chain.
Their website is also very accessible, equipped with a simple turf selector tool and side-bar filters helping you determine the best sod for you based on the amount of sun it’s likely to be exposed to. They also provide a satellite map-enabled ‘Yard Area Calculator’, helping you get a rough idea of your lawn size without having to dig out the tape measure.