Hi roverdude45,
I don't know about it being the proper way but it sure is the cheapest. If I had done it in roll out turf then it would've cost me about 1.75 K, but the way I've done it cost me around $68.
Honestly, in the early to mid 1980's this was the only way of planting Santa Ana Couch. You bought it in 12 inch squares and it was around 3 inches thick, thus it had a good root system attached and when cut up into one inch square sods and planted it would spread rather quickly as it still had a good root system attached. All you had to do was cut it's head off weekly to encourage sideways spread rather than upward growth. I did a lawn back in 1986 which had full coverage within 4 weeks which isn't possible nowadays.
Now, basically all you buy now is roll out in 2.1m lengths and the thickness is only 1.3 inch thick which means most of the root system is still with the lawn farms and all they do is top dress the sliced out areas and 6 months later they have another crop ready to harvest. It's a win win for them.
So with such a reduced thickness when you cut it into sods it spends well over a month in self survival mode due to having its root system cut away from it and thus is the reason why lawn sellers tell you to keep roll out lawn very wet for the first 4 to 5 weeks while the root system attempts to re-establish itself.
If you look at the first post I put up with the initial photos you'll see that the lawn was planted in mid October 2015 and now we have full coverage and it's mid January, so thus why it's taken so long, but I will say that many folks in my street had a bit of a dig at me on why I did it the way I did, but when they walk past now they are full of compliments on the result so far and also when told what my outlay was they are staggered compared to what they paid for roll out and to also have the job done by a contractor.
I guess one can always say self gratification is the cheapest form of pleasure. LOL !!!!
Cheers,
BB
PS. Just to answer your question on sub-surface irrigation, no I don't as I could have issues when scarification is done and tubes may get hit or sliced.
