What are the most common types of sod grass?

In the south, you want to choose a warm season grass. The most common ones are Bermuda grass, St. Augustine, and Buffalo grass. Bermuda grass has a common Bermuda and it has got a Tifway 419, which is a different variety. It is actually a true hybrid and is a little bit different. The common Bermuda it is not as hybrid the wild Bermuda, it has a little bit wider blade. One of the biggest advantages of it is that it is very easily seeded. So when you are trying to establish a lawn for a good price, the cheapest way to establish a lawn is possibly through the common Bermuda. You cut the common Bermuda at a height of about one and a half inches. You cut Tifway 419 Bermuda between a half-inch to an inch, so it's a little bit shorter. Your Tifway 419 is the one that you find at golf courses, in the fairways and sometimes even on the putting green. If you want your yard to look like a golf course, the Tifway 419 is the one to go with. The disadvantage of the Tifway 419 is that it produces thatch, so you are going to have to de-thatch it each year. Your common Bermuda grass does not produce thatch. Thatch is produced when you cut your lawn. The clippings, when they fall straight down, go down to the bottom where the roots are and they start to decompose. The decomposition is actually the thatch. A little bit of thatch is okay. You don't have to break down and fertilize the lawn, but if you have too much thatch, it creates a breeding ground for diseases. Sometimes too much water will rot out the grass, so it's not good to have too much thatch. St. Augustine decline is a disease that attacks the turf grass and basically kills it. Chinch bugs, which you usually see in the early spring and in the fall, munch on the roots and produce these round circles that you see in your yard. It looks similar to a brown patch. It's actually chinch bugs that cause this. Raleigh St. Augustine is a variety that was developed by North Carolina University. It has sod resistance and that makes it really popular, but the downfall is that it is not quite as cold-hardy. So when you have a really cold freeze, you may lose the parts of lawn because of the cold-hardiness of it. If you get dead patches, I think the easiest way to repair that type of situation is to get in there with the rake and rake up as much of the dead grass out as you can and try to expose some soil. You might need to bring a little bit of backfill, lay sod in there to fill it in, and it should root within two weeks as long as you water well. Watering is really important with sod because you want to make sure it doesn't dry out.