[Rathji]

Never ever get sod from a retail center like Home Depot, Canadian Tire, Rona, Green Gardens or any other smaller garden center. Larger places like Eagle Lake or Golden Acre *might* be ok, since they probably sell enough small amounts at a time to ensure the pallet is not too old. Call before hand and ask them how old the pallet is. If they can't (or won't) tell you then experience tells me it is a waste of a trip to even go see more often than not.

My sister in law got Chinook Sod this year and it was pretty brown since they were not allowed to water it for a long time. Not sure if that has changed yet or not but hers took a few weeks before it started to come in good.

When we did landscaping we used either Manderly Sod for deliveries to site, or if we wanted to pick it up (and we were up north) we use Blue Grass.

Manderly was the cheapest for us, even including delivery and the sod was never in real bad shape, although occasionally they had rolls with non standard dimensions.

Blue Grass once gave us sod that was decomposing so bad it was extremely hot to the touch. We laid it, as they assured us it would be fine, but it was dead within a couple days. They replaced it and gave us a credit to cover the labour to pull it out, so even if they do screw up they are willing to fix it.