Question
I live in central CA, hot and dry.  I recently hand spread and burned my lawn.  Because my lawn is very small, about 6x7, i decided to replace it with new sod instead of watering and waiting.  The new grass looked great, very green.  Yesterday, I cut the grass and found the lines from laying the sods were still there and the grass looked yellowish/brown.  Am I not watering enough???

Answer
Hi Wil;
Nope. You need to keep the soil damp enough to keep that soil the sod pads have on them wet, and the soil underneath so the little roots can grab hold in the soil underneath.
Get a bag or two of good top soil, and sprinkle it evenly over yoy lawm especially getting it into any spaces between the sod pads. Be sure you don't cover all the blades of grass. You want them sticking out at least a lttle tip, to get the sun.
Then water it to a depth of at least 4 or 5 inches, and keep it watered so that it doesn't dry out.
don't keep it like a swamp ( unless you put in St. augustine, you can't water that stuff too much unless you flood it for days).
Put lava sand and alfalfa meal on the ground before you put down the top soil.
That will put a lot of healthy nutrients into your soil.
After all that fertilizer is washed out of your soil, start an organic program.
Unless you removed all the soil down about 6 or 8 inches, that fertilizer is still in the soil, and that may be what is damaging the sod you put down.
If that stuff is in the soil, it will get into the roots of the new grass.
Maybe you can wash it out if you flood the soil so it is wetted down about 10 or 12 inches, and do it again in a couple of days.
You need to wash all the chemicals down and out of the soil, below where it will affect the roots of the new grass.
Charlotte