You can install sod any day of the year, especially where you live. Scrape the top of the soil and fill low spots to be as flat as possible...with some slope out to the street for drainage. The sod will have enough imperfections without your adding more by not prepping it. Don't rototill.

When it arrives have them roll it down with a roller. You want to have good contact between the bottom of the sod and the top of the soil. Roots won't grow through the air to reach moist soil below. Water it immediately after they leave. Water enough to moisten the soil under the roots but not so much that the soil gets soft or soggy. Then continue to water it 3x per day (breakfast, lunch, and dinner times) for the next 2 weeks. Unless you have a larger lot than I'm thinking of, you can do the watering by hand. I used to live just off Aviation in Hawthorne and could have easily watered the front by hand in 20 minutes.

When the grass gets up to 5 or 6 inches high, mow it back to 4 inches (highest mower setting). There is never a reason to mow St Aug lower than the highest setting.

Just curious, where are you getting the sod?

We're actually having a gardener (who does the lawn next door) install the sod so I don't know where he is going to get it. His plan is to dig up the weeds, rototill, add fertilizer, fix our sprinklers, then lay the sod. Why do you suggest against rototilling? Our front yard is a total of 1125 sqft including the park strip.

We previously tried tilling and seeding on our own but quickly learned that we cannot be trusted to water often enough without an automatic sprinkler system. Not to mention how quickly the weeds took over. Now it is mostly dead/dirt with a few scattered weeds. Zero curb appeal as is.

One more question, is it worth it to go with St. Augustine over Marathon if we're likely to sell within the next several months? I'm thinking the St. Augustine will look nicer (and hold up longer if we decide to stay) but then again the Marathon is $700 cheaper.

My vote: marathon. New buyers won’t care. Marathon looks nice.

If his plan is to rototill then he does not understand the soil. I would get a real landscaper, not a lawn mower, to do the job. Here's why. When the rototiller hits a hard spot, root, rock, or other obstacle, it bucks up out of the ground and jumps over that spot leaving an area of untilled soil. When it hits a soft spot, wet, sandy, etc., it digs in creating a deeply tilled spot which cannot be untilled. A hand held tiller cannot be controlled well enough to prevent these underground imperfections of rolling hills and holes. Then when you level the surface, that leaves an uneven distribution of fluffy soil underneath which is flat on top and rolling underneath. Immediately that soil begins to settle with the deepest fluffy soils settling much more than the lesser depth soils. The surface becomes uneven and continues to become more uneven for the next 3 years as the fluffy soil settles unevenly to match the rolling profile of the original tilling job. There is nothing worse than mowing over bumpy soil. With that in mind, here's how I would do it.

1. Get the sprinklers fixed first. This might involve digging. If it does then be certain that every speck of dirt that comes out of the hole or trench goes back into the hole or trench. It is a very common mistake to take the over fill soil and scatter it around the yard. When you do that you may as well have rototilled because the soil in the hole or trench will settle deeper than it should have had it had all the soil packed on top.
2. Find a place to get sod delivered. I would start by visiting Abeja Nursery AND Torrance Wholesale. If they don't' have it, then they might know where to go to get St Augustine delivered. They sell plants to all the retail nurseries and should know who is selling what. Also ask about Marathon to get another estimate.
3. Start watering lightly 3x per day trying to sprout any weed seeds in the yard. Do this for a week. The soil should never be squishy wet - just moist.
4. Spray RoundUp to kill everything.
5. Continue watering lightly 3x per day to sprout any slow weed seeds in the yard. Do this for a week.
6. Spray RoundUp to kill all the new weeds and grass plants.
7. Give the RU a day to work and then dig up the dead grass and weeds.
8. Level the surface as needed. Find low spots to fill. If there are high spots you can sometimes scrape them down to fill the low spots. If you have places where water settles during a rain, now is the time to bring those areas up. If you have soil higher than the surrounding concrete, now is the time to scrape it down and haul away the extra soil. Note that you might need to readjust the sprinkler height if you add or remove soil. Note that you do not need new or fresh topsoil for this. All you need is an unplanted surface for the sod to take root in.
9. When the sod arrives, it needs to be installed quickly. If you are doing this yourself, take a day off and install the sod the day it arrives. 1,000 square feet is not a lot for 2 people, but you might find volunteer neighbors willing to work for pizza and beer.
10. Roll the sod down with a water fillable roller (rented). The bottom of the sod needs to make good contact with the top of the soil. If you have a crew working on it, they can simply baby step on every square inch of it to press it down.
11. Go back to 3x per day light watering for 2 weeks until the roots knit into the soil underneath.
12. After the sod is growing into the soil, you can back off on the frequency and work your way toward normal watering. Eventually normal watering should be 1 inch, applied all at one time, every 2-3 weeks (for Torrance).
13. Also AFTER the sod has taken root, you can fertilize. New sod already has plenty of fertilizer from the sod farm, so I would fertilize at 1/2 the bag rate. If you want to use organic fertilizer, I would apply corn meal or alfalfa pellets/meal at 20 pounds per 1,000 square feet. Get that at your local feed store. I have not been to any of them, but Gee Gee Feed or Lomita Feed would be my first calls to check on availability and price. Why? Because they are closer to the horse country of Rolling Hills. They are REAL feed stores, not pet stores. 50 pound of corn should be under $10 and alfalfa under $15. If they quote $30 then they are not talking about the same products. You want ORDINARY corn meal, not horticultural or corn gluten meal.

So to make that long list seem less intimidating, here are the highlights: fix the sprinklers, kill/remove the grass, perfect the surface, lay sod, water. And NEVER rototill to prepare for grass.

It's not best practices to plant any lawn at any time of year in southern California. St. Augustine and Bermuda are cool season lawns and go dormant in the cold weather, so if we have a chilly winter, it will turn brown. If you sell in the next couple of months, you should be okay because our coldest weather doesn't usually occur until January. Marathon is common, but takes a lot more water, so if you have water restrictions, you may come to regret it. This is a good time to put in cool season turf, but spring is better for water season turf.

I'm sure Igteacher meant to say "warm season" everywhere in that post. You can still install dormant grass, but as he/she says, it will be brown for awhile. In Torrance I'm not sure when it will turn brown, but it would be later than where I live in Texas.

We're about to have another heat wave so if the grass gets put it in during the next couple days I think we'll be good as far as getting the grass to take before it starts cooling off.

Dhcall, thank you so much for that list! The gardener already started prepping the lawn today and so far he removed the weeds, leveled it out, and sprayed something all over the dirt. I believe sprinklers are next. It's possible he's not going to till but I don't really know. He was gone before I got a chance to talk to him today. We picked him because he put in and maintains our next door neighbor's lawn, which looks fantastic even after a few years, so we trust that ours should come out similar.

I'll be comparing what he says about watering etc to what you listed above and will be sure to ask questions if what he says differs.

I have St Augustine in southern California zone 10b. It doesn’t get very brown in the winter, it just stops growing.

Well, turns out our sprinkler system is fried and we'll be having it dug up and completely replaced so our costs just went up quite a bit. Now considering saving that $700 and going with the Marathon over the St. Augustine. Decisions, decisions...

Dchall, I just checked the mileage, we are exactly 5 miles from the ocean. We can usually see the morning fog and June gloom but it only occasionally comes in this far. Would Marathon be a big mistake here?

If we go with Marathon, does it make a difference if we use original or Marathon II? It sounds like the original is possibly more durable.

You've been searching my posts! Marathon certainly works in the "late night and early morning fog" zone. You are so close, though, you can probably get away with it.

Again, be sure when they replace the sprinkler system that all the soil goes back in and on top of the original trench. They should lay out plastic or something to hold the soil while working in the holes and trenches. That way they don't lose any going back in/on.

I'm not familiar enough with Marathon I, II, and III to give you an informed answer.

The rototiller is the worst. What he did is so much better, but still likely not needed. Two weeks ago I put down 90 pieces of St Aug sod on top of bare, unprepared soil. It's taking very well. In my lazy approach, I watered 1x per day, but I did it every day. Then my wife helped out with a soaker hose. I gotta say, the soaker worked great. It was on a low trickle from the faucet - maybe 2 cups per minute. The next day there was a mushroom and some weeds are coming up, so it's plenty wet. So for St Aug sod, maybe 3x per day is a lot. Just never let the soil become soggy. If you're doing it right you should feel good about walking on it without sinking in.

Good luck with that and thanks for the name of your vendor. Someone else from Hawthorne was asking.

Here's a pic of some of the 90 square feet. This is about 50 square feet. It goes from the line of plants to the left up to the dog. The sod adds an inch to the soil height, and I did not want to raise the level by the fence, so I'm planning to let the sod creep out to the fence. That won't take long, but it will be next spring.

How is your grass now?

We just laid sod near end of June and had to water water water. It looks good now and I hope it continues to look that way with reduced watering.

Of course, many people are getting rid of their lawns these days with our drought!