There's plenty of options out there online for how to prepare the soil for new sod. We even created a page on that. One of the questions that always comes up is whether or not you should rototill before laying sod.

In our opinion - Yes you should rototill the ground before laying sod.

Why You Should Rototill

The whole point of laying new sod is to have a beautiful yard right? And you can either lay sod yourself or hire a company like us to do the sod installation in Jacksonville for you.

Sod is simply grass that's been cut from one location and intended to be installed in another location. So you want to make that new location as acceptable to the new sod as possible.

Since grass needs strong roots to take hold and prosper, the point of rototilling is to loosen the ground. By loosening the ground, we do 3 main things:

1. We give the grass roots space to grow into with the loosened dirt
2. We bring oxygen down into the soil which the grass roots like
3. We allow water to easily reach the grass roots

These are all important aspects for grass to take root, grow strong and bring you the beautiful yard you want. Yes the process adds extra work if you're doing this yourself. But you could also call our team to install the sod for you and we will handle everything. We will rototill the ground for you and you get to simply enjoy the benefits!

Rototilling is just a fancy way of saying loosen the ground. There are machines you can buy or rent called rototillers that are designed to do just that. They break up the ground where the sod will be laid.

You don't necessarily need a rototilling machine to do this though. You can use a shovel or garden rake. The goal is to loosen the top 2 inches of earth. How you accomplish that is up to you.