Yes, your best bet would be to buy this, Pluger

(or any pluger that is 3x3)

place the sod on a piece of wood and press the pluger into the sod to cut it into 3x3 squares. Then use the same pluger to make the holes in your lawn and plug away.

I know this is old but I am wanting to find out if you successfully used Sod cut up into plugs? I have been harvesting sod plugs from another yard (using a sod plugger tool) and then putting them in my yard. I wanted to just get a pallett of sod and try to speed up the process but in researching I found out that true "Sod" does not have the root system like a a plug that you pull or a tray of plugs that you buy. So that is why I wanted to see if you tried cutting up pieces of sod and using them as plugs?? If that worked it is MUCH cheaper than buying plugs and it would be alot faster than driving to harvest 75-100 plugs at a time :)

Tim, I've never seen St Aug plugs, so I had to go shopping. It looks like they are about 4 inches square and deeply rooted. Sod, on the other hand, is much less dense with roots. If you cut up sod, I would not go smaller than 6 inch squares.

For the cost of one flat of plugs you could buy 1/2 a pallet of sod.

Guess I’m lucky, there’s a place near me that sells Floratam and palmetto plugs for $8 for a tray of 18. They’re almost all root, and they spread fast, I put them in a month ago and already have stolons going out a foot. In my experience sod takes a very long time to root and spread

I wanted to provide an update. My dad has a yard full of St Augustine and I got him and myself a plug puller on Amazon. We can pull 300-400 plugs fairly quickly so my son has been helping me just pull St. Augustine plugs from his house and put them in here. I would have to drive about 3 hours to Jackson MS to get a pallet of sod ($195 for the pallet). After pulling the plugs of dirt from my yard, I fill them with water and then fill them with water again before putting the new St. Augustine plug 1/2 way in. Then go back and stomp them all, all the way in. The new plugs are doing very well :) Thank you very much for the replies!!

you did the right thing.

no....there are not enough roots in cut sod, true SA plugs will have more of a root zone when planting than cutting up pieces of sod. Starter fertilizer is your friend also. I plugged my backyard on 18in centers and it filled in in two months.