How to Plant Zoysia Grass Plugs

Should You Plant Zoysia Grass Plugs?

People sometimes ask us about planting Zoysia grass plugs instead of covering their project area with Zoysia sod.  The reasoning here is that they can save money by purchasing fewer pieces of sod.  Instead they would cut the pieces of sod into squares or plugs and then space those plugs around their project area, hoping that the Zoysia grass would grow to fill in the spaces between the plugs.

Our advice is don’t do this.  Zoysia is a slow growing grass and very soon you’ll be battling weeds growing between your Zoysia grass plugs.  We grow Zoysia grass from plugs on our farm, but we’re skilled at combatting those weeds and we have chemicals that we can use as trained applicators that you can’t use as a homeowner.  Here’s more from Michael Romine, Owner of Houston Grass South.

Summary of How to Plant Zoysia Grass Plugs

The question is how to plant Zoysia grass plugs. We’ve addressed this in some of our other videos. We don’t actually recommend putting plugs of any of our types of grasses out.

The theory is you cut these 16 x 24 inch pieces up into 4 inch pieces and spread them out. That method works for the farms that are planting acres and acres of this stuff at a time, but for homeowners, it’s just normally not practical at all. The weeds that come up in the meantime, and the time that it takes to get those weeds under control, and the chemicals involved with doing that, any savings that you may have up front buying grass would be eaten up pretty rapidly if you tried to plug any grass.

Zoysia, with its extremely slow growth habit, it would be a long time before you had a yard full of sod, I would say a year to a year and a half, depending on how closely you put the plugs together. But you would be talking about a long time before you had a yard of pretty green grass.

Don’t waste lots of money by trying to save a little money.  If you want Zoysia for your lawn, we can give you a great price for top-quality Palisades Zoysia grass with discounts for quantities.  If the cost of Zoysia grass is too much for your budget, please consider our Palmetto St. Augustine grass as a shade-tolerant variety that will probably remind you of Zoysia.

We have all of our grass varieties available for your inspection and barefoot testing in front of our office.  We’re located a few miles east of Sienna Plantation, just off Highway 6 on McKeever Road.  If we can answer any of your questions, please call us at 281-431-7441 or send us an email using our contact form.