CT SOD

CT SOD CT Sod provides top-quality, locally grown sod with expert installation and fast delivery across CT, MA, NY, and NJ. Contact us today for a lush, green lawn!

Transform your lawn with our premium grass varieties, perfectly suited for your area.

Landscapers: the fertilizer goes in with the prep, not on top of the rolls.That is the whole idea behind UNDER SOD™. You...
09/22/2026

Landscapers: the fertilizer goes in with the prep, not on top of the rolls.

That is the whole idea behind UNDER SOD™. Your crew spreads it on the graded topsoil, tills it in with the last pass, and lays the sod. No extra trip, no spreader on fresh rolls. It is a 4-2-5 with potassium forward, four mycorrhizal species, and no iron, so nothing stains the walk or the pool coping.

Thirty days later, once the sod holds when you tug a corner, OVER SOD™ goes on top: 8-0-6, phosphorus free, non-staining iron. One bag is the whole 30-day visit.

The first and only two-step fertilizer system made for new sod: Under Sod beneath the roll, then Over Sod 30 days later. Shipping Spring 2027.

Here is why. Almost every soil test we see on a residential job comes back medium or high in phosphorus. The starter fer...
09/22/2026

Here is why. Almost every soil test we see on a residential job comes back medium or high in phosphorus. The starter fertilizers sold for new lawns are loaded with phosphorus anyway, because they were designed for farm fields, not for a yard that has been fertilized for decades. Extra phosphorus does nothing for the sod, runs off toward the Sound, and can suppress the root fungi new sod depends on.

So we wrote our own. Two bags, two steps.

UNDER SOD™ goes into the soil before the sod is laid: a 4-2-5, potassium forward, no iron, with four species of mycorrhizae. It is mixed into the top 4 to 6 inches, where the roots are about to grow.

OVER SOD™ goes on top 30 days later, once the sod passes the tug test: an 8-0-6 with non-staining iron and no phosphorus.

Test first. If the report says phosphorus is low, follow the report. If it says medium or high, which is most yards, this is the system.

The first and only two-step fertilizer system made for new sod: Under Sod beneath the roll, then Over Sod 30 days later. Shipping Spring 2027.

Fall sod, the 30-day feeding, and the date your state says no.September is when lawns get made. Warm soil, cool air, rai...
09/12/2026

Fall sod, the 30-day feeding, and the date your state says no.

September is when lawns get made. Warm soil, cool air, rain does the watering, and cool-season grass keeps pushing roots until the ground freezes. October is still very good. November works on unfrozen ground. The agronomy is not the catch. The paperwork is.

Here is the rule that does not move: new sod gets fed once, at day 30, after it passes the tug test, with a phosphorus-free bag at about 1 lb of nitrogen per 1,000 sq ft. Grab a corner and pull. If it fights you, feed it. If it lifts, water and check again in a week.

Here is what moves: every state we deliver to has a date after which lawn fertilizer is either illegal or pointless, and none of them wrote a new-sod exemption into it the way the phosphorus rules have. Sod laid September 1 feeds October 1 everywhere, no drama. Sod laid October 15 has day 30 on November 14, and that date is legal in some states, the last legal day in others, and already closed in a few.

The dates that bite:

Vermont closes October 15. Earliest in the region. Sod laid September 15 has day 30 on the first blackout day. Tug test on the 14th, feed on the 14th, or wait for April 1.

Suffolk County closes November 1. Sod laid October 1 feeds on Halloween or waits for spring. Nassau closes November 15. New York's statewide date is December 1, which does you no good on Long Island.

New Jersey homeowners close November 15. Sod laid October 15 feeds on the 14th, last day. Pros get until December 1.

Maryland closes November 16. Massachusetts closes December 1 but has the one rule that follows the grass instead of the calendar: nothing on dormant or brown turf, any date. That is good agronomy everywhere and we apply it in every state.

Connecticut has no date at all for this feeding. The 2012 law restricts phosphate products December 1 through March 15. A phosphorus-free bag is not covered. The only limit is whether the grass is still growing, and UConn's April 15 to October 15 window is the sensible line, not a prohibition. New Hampshire, Maine, and Rhode Island have no statewide date either.

Now the sentence you have read a hundred times: no nitrogen after October 1. It is a rule of thumb for fast-release nitrogen on established lawns in snow-mold country. It is not the law in any state we serve, and the extension literature runs the other way. Cornell says late-season feeding promotes root growth. Michigan State's Paul Rieke put the timing at the last week of October to the second week of November. Virginia Tech says mid October to late November. Ohio State research found cool-season roots keep growing at soil temps near freezing long after the shoots quit. The snow-mold concern is real and specific: heavy fast nitrogen while the grass is still pushing leaf. One pound, mostly slow-release, once, inside Cornell's 1 lb ceiling, is not that.

If day 30 lands in the blackout, nothing bad happens. The sod rooted on what went under it at install. Water through dry spells until the ground freezes, keep traffic off it, and in spring take the feeding you skipped on the first legal date once the grass is actively growing. Same bag, same rate. Do not double up. Do not put anything on top before the tug test passes. Late October sod may not pass until April, and that is the sod doing its job slowly, not failing. Same story for November installs: roots a little, goes dormant, finishes the job in April, as long as the base was ready and the ground was not frozen when the truck showed up.

The bag for day 30 is OVER SOD™, 8-0-6 with 2 percent non-staining iron, one 25 lb bag per four pallets. Under the sod at install, UNDER SOD™ 4-2-5, no iron, four species of mycorrhizae, one bag per pallet mixed into the top 4 to 6 inches. Both spring 2027. Until then, LESCO 24-0-11 Poly Plus at 4.2 lb per 1,000 is the bag we point people to for this feeding. Never a starter, a weed-and-feed, or a pre-emergent on new sod, any time of year.

The full post has the install-date table for ten states checked against each state's own text, and a tool where you punch in your install date, state, and lawn size and it hands back your feeding date and bag count.

Sod delivered or installed across CT, MA, NY, NJ, RI, NH, VT and ME. Call (203) 806-4086.

https://ctsod.com/everything-sod-blog/f/fall-sod-30-day-feeding-dates-by-state/

The 30-day feeding doesn't move. The state fertilizer dates do. Install-date table for ten states, checked against each state's own text.

Starter fertilizer for sod: the bag almost everybody buys and almost nobody needs.Here is what the big box aisle does no...
09/12/2026

Starter fertilizer for sod: the bag almost everybody buys and almost nobody needs.

Here is what the big box aisle does not tell you. Starter fertilizer is any lawn bag with a high middle number. 24-25-4. 12-18-8. 18-24-12. That middle number is phosphorus, and it is high for one reason: a germinating seed has a root a few millimeters long and phosphorus does not move through soil. So you park the phosphorus where the baby root is going to be. Smart. For seed.

Sod is not seed. Sod shows up as a mature plant with a root mat cut off at the farm. Its whole job in the first 30 days is to push new roots out of that mat and into your soil. What it wants for that is soil contact, water every day, potassium, and living biology in the zone where root meets dirt. Now look at the K number on any starter on the shelf. Scotts 24-25-4 at label rate puts down 0.75 lb of phosphate and 0.12 lb of potash per 1,000 sq ft. That is backwards for a rooting plant.

Then there is the part nobody wants to hear. Your soil probably already has the phosphorus. Cornell went through thousands of home lawn samples across New York and found at least 80 percent had enough already. Vermont surveyed lawns before passing its phosphorus law and found 60 percent had too much. Cornell's rule for lawns is one sentence long: use a fertilizer with phosphorus only if the soil test says phosphorus is low.

It is also the law. Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey and nine other states restrict phosphorus on an established lawn unless you have a soil test in hand. Every one of them carves out an exemption for a brand new lawn, which is exactly why phosphorus belongs under the sod, once, and never on top again without a test. In Connecticut that test has to be from the last two years, nothing with phosphate goes down December 1 through March 15, and keep it 20 feet from water.

And extra phosphorus is not just wasted. It works against you. New roots get colonized by mycorrhizal fungi that extend their reach for water and nutrients. The plant pays those fungi in carbon, and it stops paying when phosphorus is easy. The largest meta-analysis on the question found mycorrhizal abundance dropped 32 percent on average under phosphorus fertilization. Kansas State adds that excess phosphorus can interfere with iron uptake. The industry fix for that is dumping iron into the bag, which greens the leaf without fixing a thing underneath it.

So when do you actually need a starter? When the test says low. Scraped new construction lots, imported fill, some sands. Then it is the right tool and the new lawn exemption was written for you. Use it at the report's rate, mix it into the top 4 to 6 inches, once. Never spread it on top of laid sod. Phosphorus will not travel down to the root zone anyway. It just sits in the thatch.

Test comes back optimum or high, which is the usual answer on an established lot? Skip the starter. Use a potassium-forward, low-phosphorus bag with biology, tilled in before the sod goes down. That is what UNDER SOD™ is: 4-2-5, no iron, four species of mycorrhizae, one 25 lb bag per pallet mixed into the top 4 to 6 inches. Then nothing on top for 30 days. Week two sod is supposed to look tired. It is growing roots, not leaves. The week two bag is the single most common way a good install goes backwards. Day 30, after it passes the tug test, OVER SOD™ 8-0-6 with 2 percent non-staining iron, one bag per four pallets. Both ship spring 2027.

A soil test costs less than one bag of starter. The full post has the 13-state law table, the label math on every common starter, and a tool that spits out your plan by state, test result and site.

Sod delivered or installed across CT, MA, NY, NJ, RI, NH, VT and ME. Call (203) 806-4086.

https://ctsod.com/everything-sod-blog/f/starter-fertilizer-for-sod-do-you-need-it/

Starter fertilizer is built for seed. On most established soil it adds phosphorus you don't need. What the labs and the laws say to put under sod instead.

OVER SOD™ is an 8-0-6 with 2 percent non-staining iron, applied on top of new sod 30 days after installation, one 25-pou...
09/12/2026

OVER SOD™ is an 8-0-6 with 2 percent non-staining iron, applied on top of new sod 30 days after installation, one 25-pound bag per four pallets.

That is 2,000 square feet per bag and about 1 pound of nitrogen per 1,000, mostly slow-release, with sulfate of potash, humic acid, and kelp. Phosphate is held at 0.67 percent or less, which makes it phosphorus-free under Connecticut’s fertilizer law and legal on an established lawn without a soil test. The iron is a non-staining form, so it will not mark the patio or the pool deck.

Timing: about 30 days after install, once a corner of the sod will not lift when you tug it. Not in a heat wave, not inside your state’s winter blackout dates, not within the water buffers. Both UNDER SOD™ and OVER SOD™ ship in spring 2027.

By day 30 the starter under new sod is spent and the roots are in. What the lawn needs now is nitrogen and iron, not phosphorus. The science behind OVER…

One bag of UNDER SOD™ per pallet of sod is not a heavy rate, because it is mixed through 4 to 6 inches of soil, not spre...
09/12/2026

One bag of UNDER SOD™ per pallet of sod is not a heavy rate, because it is mixed through 4 to 6 inches of soil, not spread on top.

Fifty pounds of a 4-2-5 blended through the top 4 inches of 1,000 square feet is about 50 pounds in 28,000 pounds of soil, roughly a fifth of one percent by weight at the root. Twelve pounds raked into the top inch is 12 pounds in 7,000 pounds of soil, the same concentration, with a quarter of the rooting profile carrying it. Same exposure per pound of soil; four times the depth the roots can use.

The depth is not ours. Michigan State’s sod guide has incorporated lime and fertilizer into the top 4 inches before sod since 2004, and Rutgers puts them 4 to 6 inches deep. UNDER SOD™ is that step, with the biology and the humic and kelp carried in at the same depth.

High-P starters, 10-10-10, Milorganite, BOLSTER, or UNDER SOD™? Nine bags scored on their labels against what the universities say the fertilizer under…

UNDER SOD™ carries 1 pound of phosphate per 1,000 square feet, about a quarter of what a big-box starter puts down, and ...
09/10/2026

UNDER SOD™ carries 1 pound of phosphate per 1,000 square feet, about a quarter of what a big-box starter puts down, and the reason is the fungi.

Mycorrhizal fungi extend a young root system’s reach for water and nutrients, and the plant pays them in return for phosphorus. Flood the soil with soluble phosphate and the plant stops paying; a meta-analysis of field studies found phosphorus additions cut mycorrhizal colonization by roughly a third. So a bag that carries live inoculum and a heavy phosphate dose is working against itself.

Most established lawns in the Northeast already test medium to high in phosphorus. On that soil, UNDER SOD™ puts a light dose at the root where severed roots land and lets the biology do the rest. If a soil test comes back low, use a starter at the report’s rate instead; UNDER SOD™ is not built to fix a deficient site, and we say so.

High-P starters, 10-10-10, Milorganite, BOLSTER, or UNDER SOD™? Nine bags scored on their labels against what the universities say the fertilizer under…

UNDER SOD™ has no iron in it, and that is the most deliberate decision in the bag.Iron greens leaf. A rootless mat of so...
09/09/2026

UNDER SOD™ has no iron in it, and that is the most deliberate decision in the bag.

Iron greens leaf. A rootless mat of sod with iron under it turns dark green on day five, and a dark green lawn tells the homeowner to stop watering. The roots have not caught up. We have seen that lawn fail in week three more times than we can count.

Under the sod, the job is roots, potassium, and biology. Color is the wrong signal for the first 30 days, so the bag that goes under the sod carries none. The iron comes 30 days later, on top, in OVER SOD™, when there are roots to use it and the color means something.

Why the fertilizer for new sod goes under it at install and on it at 30 days: rooting biology, phosphorus law, mycorrhizae, iron, and the university…

UNDER SOD™ is a 4-2-5 fertilizer built for one job: the soil directly under new sod, at installation, once.It is made by...
09/09/2026

UNDER SOD™ is a 4-2-5 fertilizer built for one job: the soil directly under new sod, at installation, once.

It is made by Under Sod Brands and distributed by CT Sod, and it ships in spring 2027. The analysis is 4 percent nitrogen, 2 percent phosphate, 5 percent potash, with four species of endomycorrhizal fungi (Rhizophagus irregularis, Funneliformis mosseae, Glomus aggregatum, Glomus etunicatum), Bacillus and Trichoderma, 6 percent humic acid, and 2 percent Ascophyllum kelp, in a fine SGN 90 granule that disappears into the soil. It contains no iron on purpose.

The rate is one 25-pound bag per pallet of sod, 500 square feet, mixed into the top 4 to 6 inches of prepared topsoil before the finish grade. Lay the sod the same day, roll, water. It is not a surface starter, it is not raked into the top inch, and it is not reapplied.

Notify list:

The first and only two-step fertilizer system made for new sod: Under Sod beneath the roll, then Over Sod 30 days later. Shipping Spring 2027.

The fertilizer under new sod and the fertilizer on top of it 30 days later are two different jobs, and we built a bag fo...
09/09/2026

The fertilizer under new sod and the fertilizer on top of it 30 days later are two different jobs, and we built a bag for each.

Under the sod, at installation, most established lawns already test medium to high in phosphorus, so a high-phosphorus starter is the wrong bag and, once the lawn is established, not legal without a soil test. The bag for that job is UNDER SOD™: 4-2-5, no iron, four species of mycorrhizae, humic acid and kelp, one 25-pound bag per pallet mixed into the top 4 to 6 inches of soil before the sod goes down. If your soil test comes back low in phosphorus, use a starter at the report's rate instead. Until UNDER SOD™ ships in spring 2027.

On top of the sod, 30 days later, once a corner won't lift, the lawn needs nitrogen, potassium, and iron, and no phosphorus. That bag is OVER SOD™: 8-0-6 with 2 percent non-staining iron, one 25-pound bag per four pallets, watered in. Until it ships, a phosphorus-free slow-release bag at about a pound of nitrogen per 1,000 does the job.

We scored nine bags people put under sod and seven they put on top, on their own labels, against what the university turf programs say each job requires. Both scorecards:

ctsod.com/everything-sod-blog/f/best-fertilizer-under-new-sod/

ctsod.com/everything-sod-blog/f/best-fertilizer-on-top-of-new-sod-northeast/

Questions about your soil test or your install? (203) 806-4086.

Every bag people put over new sod in the Northeast, scored on its own label against what the universities say a 30-day feeding must do.

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26 Broad Street
Milford, CT
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