Advice on what is going wrong with newly laid sod

[shravpb]

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Hi forum members,

I live in Seattle, WA in USA. I got my backyard landscaped in August 2016, and had new sod laid down.
Since the last month it has been raining continuously (quite common in these regions). Also I have had a lot of fall leaves fall over the sod.

In the last two weeks I saw a drastic change in the lawn. I am attaching a picture below:

This is my first time taking care of a lawn. To my untrained eye it seems that the lawn has rotted out with too much water ? Is it because I did not remove the dead leaves covering the lawn in time ?

I am looking for advice on what went wrong here and can this be fixed ?

[imafan26]

It does look like it got too much water. How well does the soil drain? What kind of turf is it?

You my need to install a French drain if water pools on the grass for prolonged periods.

[applestar]

It's imperative to keep fallen leaves off of the grass. Any time the leaves are dry enough between rain. If using strong enough blower, maybe you could still blow off wet leaves, but when raking, the grass needs to be dry also or they will be damaged. Remember to rake like you are painting the floor -- backwards.

You can see in the photos where the older fallen leaves have started to break down and plaster against the grass. They are depriving the grass of light and air, weakening them, then the weakened grass is susceptible to fungal/microbial action to combine with the dead leaves and break them down into compost. You will likely end up with bare patches where this has been too severe.

[imafan26]

If there are a lot of leaves, how much sun does the grass get? Most grasses need at least 6 hours of full sun a day. Some shade tolerant ones can do with a little less.