AP

As my colleagues at CSNChicago wrote about over the weekend, if youre a die-hard Notre Dame fan feeling nostalgic about natural grass at Notre Dame Stadium, you can now buy a two-by-five foot piece of grass turf from the stadium for $149.95.

Notre Dame sent a release out Monday morning with more details on the sale: The sod will be removed from Notre Dame Stadium by Tuesday, May 20, shipped on May 21 and delivered by May 23 (the $149.95 includes two-day shipping). The cuts of grass will come from the least-worn areas of the stadium some sections were in pretty awful shape by the end of the 2013 season, and in even worse shape during the Blue-Gold game last month.

Notre Dame has played football on natural grass for every season of the programs existence, but will switch to artificial turf for the coming 2014 season. Issues with the field grew over the last few years, with 2013s regular season home finale against BYU a pretty egregious example of how bad the turf got (there were about 10 instances of a player being tackled after slipping and falling on a dead patch of grass).

Natural or artificial turf became a sticking point with a lot of Notre Dame fans hoping the school would continue to do things differently than other college programs. But tradition only goes so far when it becomes impossible to maintain a passable quality in natural grass.

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You can now buy grass from Notre Dame Stadium

Published: Monday, 5/19/2014

ASSOCIATED PRESS

SOUTH BEND, Ind. Notre Dame is selling rolls of grass from its football stadium to the public as it prepares to install an artificial surface before the upcoming season.

The school announced today it is selling 2-foot-by-5-foot sections of grass from Notre Dame Stadium for $149.95, which includes two-day shipping and a certificate of authenticity.

The school says the grass will be removed from the stadium Tuesday and be shipped on Wednesday.

Notre Dame announced last month it was switching to FieldTurf because of problems with the playing surface in recent seasons. The university installed new sod at the stadium four times last year, including twice during the season.

Athletic director Jack Swarbrick says the change could allow the stadium to be used for other events.

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Notre Dame selling stadium grass turf

Anne Risser Lee / University of Findlay

Workers correct an unfortunate lawn care accident that affected most of University of Findlay's campus.

The University of Findlay in Ohio took a lot of pride in its award-winning campus landscape until last week.

The school's lawn-care company accidentally applied weed-killer instead of fertilizer and wiped out nearly all of the lawns, a university spokeswoman said.

The mixup happened April 29 but the damage didn't become apparent for about a week, when expanses of green turned to brown dirt fields.

Now the school has to re-sod or re-seed more than 50 acres, which could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

University spokeswoman Brianna Patterson said the contractor's insurance company would probably pick up the tab for the work. She declined to identify the company.

"People make mistakes and we dont want to do anything that would harm their other business," she said.

She noted that the school won an "America in Bloom" award last year for its beautiful campus.

"Its very unfortunate this happened," she said. "We will work to fix it, and the grounds will be restored to their former glory."

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No Grass to Keep Off at Ohio's University of Findlay

FINDLAY, Ohio (AP) A university in northwest Ohio is being forced to replace almost all its grass after weedkiller was accidentally applied to lawns instead of fertilizer.

University of Findlay spokeswoman Brianna Patterson says the chemical was applied to campus lawns during the last week of April and it will take several weeks to reseed and re-sod the affected areas.

Patterson tells the Findlay Courier (http://bit.ly/1k7MJ30 ) for a story Friday the mistake is unfortunate because of how hard the university works to keep the campus looking nice.

Findlay University did not release the name of the company that made the mistake but is working with the business' insurance company to pay for it to be fixed.

The university says grass was killed on as many as 54 of the campus' 72 acres.

___

Information from: The Courier, http://www.thecourier.com

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Lawn Care Error Kills Most Of Ohio College's Grass

Oakville Beaver

Garth Webb Secondary School teams are scheduled to play 51 regular-season games this spring.

None of them are slated to be contested on Webb soil.

In fact, according to Webb phys-ed head Jay Anderson, the Chargers have hosted just one game a field hockey contest last fall since the school opened two years ago.

The reason? An chronically-saturated athletic field that Anderson wryly suggests might be more appropriately used as a bird sanctuary than as a venue for field hockey, soccer, rugby and football.

A couple of weeks ago, it was just covered with geese. They enjoy it, Anderson says.

Then the smile disappears.

Were a school who has just opened up, so you try to get traditions going. You try to get momentum going for school sports, and then you dont have a field to play on, Anderson says.

That makes it tough.

School thought it was getting artificial turf

Link:
Grass field not cutting it for Oakville's Garth Webb Secondary School

New grass. (sod) Gone #39;s the mud.
Millie #39;s waitin #39;. And new sod.

By: Robert G. Nace

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New grass. (sod) Gone's the mud. - Video

In the U.S., St. Augustine grass is found from the Carolinas to Florida and westward along the Gulf Coast to Texas and in Southern and Central California. Because of its lack of winter hardiness, St. Augustine grass is restricted to areas with mild winter temperatures.

After establishment the success of St. Augustine grass as a lawn grass depends largely on management. Mowing, fertilization and supplemental watering are required to maintain a dense, green, weed-free turf of St. Augustine grass.

Mowing heights may range from 1 to 3 inches depending on the frequency of mowing and the degree of shade present. At mowing heights below two inches, St. Augustine grass should be mowed every five days during late spring and summer. At a 2 1/2 inch mowing height, a 7-10 mowing schedule is adequate. Above 2 1/2 inches, St. Augustine grass should be mowed at 10 to 14 day intervals. In moderate to dense shade, St. Augustine grass should be mowed at about 3 inches at 10 day intervals.

Each pallet of Raleigh St. Augustine sod covers approximately 450 Square Feet and contains approximately 160 pieces of sod

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Get a Free Quote from GrassSod.com (All Fields are Required)

Rob Nelson stands just outside the arc of a sprinkler and looks over 18,000 square feet of new turf that will be ready to harvest this week.

The manager of Southern Turf Hawaii, which first put down roots on Kaiminani Drive in November, Nelson just needs a customer.

As the sprinklers soak 3 acres of new grass at the farm, Nelson isnt worried about finding someone interested in purchasing his 2-by-4-foot squares of green, which run between $2 and $3 a square foot. Thats because Southern Turf Hawaii the biggest sod farm in the state with operations on Oahu and Maui has been shipping sod over on barges to meet Big Island demand.

The landscapers are busy, said Nelson, whose background is in golf course management on Oahu, Kauai and Lanai.

The Southern Turf Hawaii sign is a new sight on Kaiminani, but the company isnt new to the state. In business for two decades, stores on Oahu and Maui specialize in sod for residential, commercial, retail and golf course projects, including two current projects for golf courses on Maui and Lanai. And while Southern Turf Hawaii is used to having landscapers reserve sod by thousands of square yards months in advance, it also offers single 2-by-4-foot squares to the do-it-yourself homeowner.

The company supplies Lowes in Kona and The Home Depot on both sides of the island.

The 5.5 acres of leased land used to have plumerias growing on it. The property has been graded and covered with a layer of fine gravel, plastic and sod. A home on the lower acreage serves as Nelsons residence and a barn is in the planning stages. A water tank serves as an emergency backup in case county sources fail. Sod would be dead in three days if water sources failed, Nelson said.

People are stopping by now, asking questions. How do I do it? Were here to help, Nelson says. This is foreign to a lot of homeowners.

One method called plugging can help landscapers save money. By cutting up the sheets of sod into plugs, theyll only need a fifth of the turf that would be needed for a full layer. Once in the ground, the sod will spread quickly to cover bare ground.

Come buy only what you can put down in one day, Nelson recommends.

More here:
Sod company lays down roots in Kona

Dave Kuypers is pleased to just be opening his course.

Kuypers, the superintendent of Cutten Fields in Guelph, Ont., has struggled with ice damage on much of the green.

Golfers will be out playing this weekend, he says. They wont be putting on greens though.

Cutten Fields, a historic private course, is one of numerous Ontario golf facilities that faced an unusual amount of damage from ice and the extreme cold that occurred through to the end of March.

READ MORE: Toronto golf courses in the rough, but open for business

Most golf courses are open in April in Ontario. This year many are just opening in coming days, while others have opened with damaged greens that are brown because the Poa annua grass died after being under ice for more than 45 straight days.

Owen Russell knew he had a problem when the smell hit him.

Russell, the superintendent at Markland Woods in Etobicoke, Ont. for the past eight years, ventured out on his course in February, worried about the impact of ice and cold on his clubs greens. Like many superintendents concerned about how the coldest winter in the last three decades would affect his course, Russell drilled through the ice to see what was happening with the grass underneath.

I knew from the smell that we had a problem, he says. It smelled bad, sort of like rotten eggs.

WATCH: Conditions were questionable as Torontos public golf courses opened for the season in April.

Excerpt from:
Cold winter leads to golf course struggles

Century-old sod wall highlight for researchers, students

The little house on the prairie is not so little anymore.

A team of interdisciplinary researchers has begun analysis on part of a 110-year-old sod house that was once home to a group of Custer County, Neb. pioneers.

This is the oddest project I have ever worked on, said John Carter, senior research folklorist/associate editor at the Nebraska State Historical Society. We have a lot of disciplines bringing together a lot of resources toward a central goal. Never in my life have I been a part of such a thing, nor have I ever had as much fun.

Built by Henry Eugene Chrisman in 1902-03, the sod house was originally a three-room dwelling with exterior doors into each room. The house is unique in that no other with its plan has been recorded in Nebraska.

Two years ago, Larry Estes, whose family owns the sod house, contacted archaeologists at the historical society to survey the property.

That is where I got involved, Carter said. I have a long and deep interest in sod houses, as they are not only cultural features on the landscape; they are part of the landscape.

Custer County is the epicenter of sod house construction, with more sod buildings there than anywhere else in North America, Carter said.

The project involves studying a 4-by-8-foot chunk of the sod house deemed the sod wall, which was removed from the house in November 2013. Pete Stegen of NET produced a video of the teardown available at http://go.unl.edu/ghxe.

I see these sod blocks as archived samples taken from a prairie in 1902, said Dave Wedin, professor of plant and ecosystem ecology in UNLs School of Natural Resources. Its rare to find plant and soil samples that old. These samples can give us insights into how that prairie functioned over a century ago before the onset of modern agriculture and all the changes in our landscape.

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Century-old sod wall highlight for researchers, students