MONTREAL – With the sudden drop in temperatures, Montrealers walking by Place du Canada Thursday stopped in their tracks to witness a bizarre sight: big patches of green amid the frost, and city workers laying down sod.
“I am surprised,” said one passerby. “I was even surprised to see them continuing construction in the snow, but grass in November?”
“Maybe summertime would be better for this,” said another.
On our Facebook page, some Global Montreal viewers reacted to a picture we posted.
“They’re doing the same thing in Quebec City”, wrote Ginette Gagné. “Seems it’s a great time of year to do this.”
“What a waste of tax payer money,” added Kelly O’Neill.
At $1.50 a square foot, sod doesn’t come cheap.
“I don”t know enough about this,” said a man who walked by Peel and Rene Levesque, “but if it’s very likely to die, this a waste of money. But if it’s not, then it’s fine.”
Yet this isn’t the worst season to be laying down sod. Experts say there’s a very logical explanation as to why construction workers might choose to lay it down now.
“It’s not an unusual thing. A lot of construction sites have to finish the job, and they need to put down the sod. If they don’t put down the sod, it becomes a muddy area,” said Danny Menniti, VP of Marina Materials & Equipment in Lachine.
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Menniti explained sod can only be purchased starting in May. Areas that haven’t been sodded will become a mess when the snow starts to melt in April.
“Especially if it’s in the downtown core, with a lot of pedestrians, you want to have that area basically sodded so that it doesn’t become a disaster in the spring,” he said.
A city contractor explained the sod would enter a dormant phase in the winter.
“Because of the temperature, you’ re preserving the sod, it’ s like keeping it in freezer,” said Menniti. “In the spring, when snow melts, the roots will start to take.”
He says you still want to lay the sod before the ground is frozen, while you can still work the soil, but that sod laid in the fall should be just fine.
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