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At the turf farm there are many contributing factors required to get a pallet of sod on the truck for delivery or pick up. This is the page where you can find out what is happening...floods, breakdowns, pest attacks, drought, and more. Also find out the availability of different grasses at different times of year.

May 2009 Check out our new Twitter site for commentary on what is happening in the turf fields. It seems this might provide a more up to date method of communicating. Meanwhile, we are have an absolutely fantastic spring for cool season turfgrasses. The warm season turf at my farm is a little slow to come along because it has been a wonderfully mild spring. The cool season RTF tall fescue and the Blue Heat bluegrass are loving it and growing like crazy. This is a very good opportunity to prepare your cool season turfgrass for the summer ahead. Keep it mowed to the right height and get it as thick as you can going into the summer. Don't fertilize it with nitrogen now as we want to harden it off for the summer. Nitrogen now will contribute to succulent growth and more disease in the summer. Mow and mow some more to force the turf to throw out more shoots. That is the way it will thicken up and thereby have more turf to tough out a hot summer. For all we know it may be a mild summer...

April 2009 We are having a lot of rain and it is good for our lawns and our turfgrass sod fields. It has been a bit difficult to harvest the sod from the fields because they are to wet. As we move into the month we will have good inventory of new crop Blue Heat, New crop RTF tall fescue. In May we will begin harvesting Empire Zoysia and our 419 Bermuda grass. Call 800-737-TURF to place an order. We cut to order, so it is important to plan ahead and order ahead of when you need your sod.

When Spring arrives:

Spring is the time many of us get excited about our lawns. It is a wonderful time of year to beautify our surroundings and most often that entails our lawn and landscape. Fertilize your cool season lawns beginning in February and end any fertilization by mid April. RTF Tall Fescue should be fertilized in February and March at the latest. Blue Heat likes Nitrogen and can be fertilized in February, March, and finish lightly in April. Think of your spring efforts as achieving two goals: 1) Beautify your surroundings, and 2) prepare your grounds for summer stress conditions.

Beautifying is the easy part and many of us know intuitively how to do that and there is a lot of help available to encourage us. Preparing our grounds for summer stress conditions in the spring may be a new concept. Cool season grasses do great Fall, Winter, and Spring, but when it comes to the summer in Carolina it can get hot and dry. We do not want to push our cool season grasses so hard in the spring that they grow into the summer months so fast that they are like a freight train driving into a wall. If we push our cool season turfgrasses to hard into the summer they will suffer under the heat and dry weather for which our summers are known.

Fertilizing in the spring is fine and important to getting a dense turfgrass lawn. We want a dense lawn to prevent weeds from emerging. It is important to harden the cool season lawn as we go into May and June. That means it should have run out of any spring applied nitrogen by the time May comes around. A cool season grass growing to fast into the summer months is more likely to be susceptible to disease pressure and an inability to withstand dry conditions. Use your irrigation system for deep watering and not frequent shallow watering. The latter method will lead your lawn to weakness in the summer months as the shallow root system is unable to find water in the top layer of the soil. Deep watering will lead to a deep root system and a lawn that is more capable of surviving the stress of the summer conditions.

1. Fall Maintenance begins in September. Fertilize cool season grasses with one pound of nitrogen per 1000 square feet. You can easily get this by using 10 pounds of 10-10-10 per 1000 square feet. Put this down in the first two weeks of September. One bag of lime per 1000 square feet can be helpful in raising the pH. If needed, overseed Tall Fescue at a rate of 2.5 to 5 pounds per 1000 square feet. Using the RTF seed will help build rhizomes in order to keep thickening the turf in your yard. There are several excellent varieties of turf type Tall Fescue to choose from in addition to RTF. Having the right soil fertility and using correct turf maintenance practices it the best way to maintain an excellent lawn.
2. Thoughts on AUTUMN
3. A dry Fall has provided just enough moisture to get new crops germinated and growing well. Harvesting conditions have been good. Blue Heat is really doing well.
4. Thoughts on JULY
5. We close for equipment maintenance the last week of June and close for vacation the week of July 4th. July can be a busy month if we have water, or it can be quiet if we have a drought. In either case, keep your warm season lawns mowed as tightly as your grade will allow. As for your cool season turfgrasses such as tall fescue and bluegrass minimize your inputs. Do not fertilize cool season turf and watch out for fungal diseases. Do not mow the cool season grasses very frequently, let them grow a little taller than you might during the fall, winter, and spring. Minimize the amount of water you apply and that will help minimize diseases. If the mowing height is to low your turf will lose density and the consequence of that are an invasion of weeds such as crabgrass and goosegrass.
6. This is the time of year that the grubs begin hatching their eggs. The grubs as we know them are hatched now and into July. These are the root eaters. Study your treatment options at Turffiles.
7. Stay Cool.
8. Thoughts on JUNE
9. Well, that time has come again when night temperatures don't drop below 60 degrees, hurricanes begin developing on the horizon and the warm days of summer prompt buyers to begin asking for warm season turfgrasses.
10. Typically, we begin lifting Bermuda in middle of June. The bermuda field has have the winter weeds eliminated, fertilized for the new growth, and mowed to an attractive height. The Empire Zoysia also begins lifting in early June. We are in a production region whereby our our warm season turfgrass is slower to come out than the turfgrass farms further south in South Carolina and Georgia.
11. Irrigate the right amount of water when you transplant. Don't plan on drowning your turfgrass, plan for just the right amount of water.
12. You can allow an established, healthy lawn to be watered only when showing visible signs of stress. Using this method you will conserve your water resource and save money on your water bill.
13. Thoughts on APRIL: Install the cool season grasses now. Warm season turfgrasses at our farm will not be ready until June. The fertilizer that was put down in Febuary has kicked in and with the warming temperatures the turfgrass really begins to kick. New growth emerges and you begin mowing much more than you have all winter. Keep your mower blades sharp.
14. Thoughts on FEBRUARY: The month of February is an amazing month. It is the month that cool season grasses actually begin growing for the spring. They begin putting on new roots and initiating new shoots. Now is the time to fertilize your cool season grasses. There are some general guidelines listed below. Turfgrass needs nutrition just as you and I do, so don't short change your turf by putting it on such a diet that it cannot develop successfully. The goal is just enough fertilizer to maintain a thick and dense canopy (that is the top) so that nothing else can grow in your yard other than your turfgrass. I have learned that Blue Heat can actually take a little more Nitrogen than Tall Fescue, so you might bump your Blue Heat nitrogen application up to 1.5 pounds per thousand square feet this month of February. In fact, you can budget 4 - 6 pounds of N per year compared to 3 pounds of N per thousand square feet for Tall Fescue.
15. Remember to prepare your soil correctly for transplanting new turfgrass sod onto it this spring. THINK AHEAD, PLAN AHEAD.
16. WHAT DO I DO TO PREPARE FOR A DROUGHT?
17. The best thing to do in the face of challenging soil moisture conditions and a continuing drought is to properly prepare your soil, raise the pH to a target of 6.5 and raise the level of phosphorous in your soil to a high to very high index level. This topic is discussed elsewhere on this website, but the it cannot be emphasized enough. Correct soil fertility management is your best way to combat an environmental drought and local water restrictions.
18. As you plan your turfgrass needs remember to think ahead, plan ahead. We recommend that you hire a landscape contractor due to the laborious task it is to lay out turfgrass sod. Don't shortchange the landscaper into skipping the required soil preparation. The most important thing you can do is prepare the soil right. If you are inclined to "do-it-yourself", hire a landscaper to bring in the equipment to prepare the soil and then you lay the sod down on the prepared soil.
19. THINK AHEAD, PLAN AHEAD
20. We encourage you to think ahead, plan ahead when working with your landscaper or for yourself when ordering turfgrass sod from Slater Turf Farm. We are grateful for the business. The best way to order our product is by name and order ahead of time.

Fertilize your cool season grasses in September, November, and February with one pound of Nitrogen per 1000 square feet. You can get this from 10 pounds of 10-10-10 per 1000 square feet.

Fertilize your warm season turf in June, July, and August. Don't over fertilize your centipede. That is very easy to do and you will kill it with such love. Bermuda mowing can be reduced by reducing your fertilizer. Zoysia only requires about 1.5 pounds of actual nitrogen per 1000 square feet per year, split up over three months. Use lime to raise the pH of your soil. For most turfgrasses a pH of 6.0 - 7.0 is required for your lawn to have the most roots to take up moisture and nutrients. Remember the exception is centipede. Centipede does better at a lower pH. Go to the websites of either Clemson turfgrass or North Carolina State University turfgrass for more information.