
Jimmy Bassett looks out the window, watching the big irrigation pivot roll past as he talks about the oldest zoysia sod farm in the country.
Beck’s Turf opened in 1938. The Beck family grandfather, an Auburn professor, started the farm back in the days when workers chopped out squares of grass with a machete.
Bassett and his brother, Wayne, purchased it from the original owners in 1994. They chose to keep the well-established Beck name even though no Beck family members are still involved.
The sod farm on Wire Road between Auburn and Tuskegee has five locations throughout Macon and Lee counties. And though the namesake family connection is gone, the Auburn connection remains strong – the university does agricultural research there and students visit frequently.
The Bassett brothers grew up in Union Springs, close to the sod farm. Jimmy graduated from Auburn in 1987 with a degree in business administration. Wayne graduated from Troy University in 1986 with a marketing degree. Wayne worked in sales for another sod farm and Jimmy was a banker when they decided to buy the well-established, family-owned farm.
Some original employees stayed through the owner transition. A few of their 45 workers have been there almost 50 years.

The amount of sod growing at any one time takes up about 800 of the farms’ 1,800 total acres. Their sales region extends about 200 miles, Bassett says, mostly north.
“Atlanta and Birmingham are our two biggest markets,” he says. “We go to Huntsville. We’ll go all the way to Athens, Georgia. We go to Tuscaloosa, Auburn and Montgomery.”
Beck’s sells sod to large and small customers, both commercial and residential — mostly to landscapers or contractors.
“We really do it all,” Bassett says.
Their products include the oddly named centipede grass, one of the most widely used lawn grasses in the Southeast; Tifway 419 Bermuda, a warm-season grass used mostly on sports fields and commercial sites; the sports and recreation variety Celebration Bermudagrass; Meyer Zoysia, a strain first grown in 1940; and drought-resistant Emerald Zoysia.
Sod experts say that a turfgrass lawn needs no special care because it’s healthy and mature when installed; whereas a sprigged, plugged or seeded lawn requires years of nurturing to reach maturity.
The biggest problem homeowners create when they install a beautiful new sod lawn is loving it too much.
“What we see in the long run is folks are watering the grass too much,” says Bassett. “Sometimes folks water it every day for 15 minutes when you’d be better off watering twice a week for an hour.”
By the same token, “when you first put the grass down sometimes they under water, and that is an issue.”
Another rookie mistake by both residential and commercial customers is not preparing the ground.

“If it’s not smooth, your grass is not going to look smooth,” Bassett says.
Soil samples help determine what kind of grass or fertilizers are best for specific land. Most county extension services in Alabama offer free testing.
A major nemesis for the suburban owner is the lowly armyworm, which can turn a showcase lawn brown in just days. The critters usually seek out the best lawns – not the weedy ones.
That kind of invasion doesn’t happen at a professional grass-growing operation like Beck’s.
“We’re out there checking them every day,” says Bassett. “We stay on top of it.”
The 2024 drought was indeed a challenge, though, and kept the Beck’s Turf Farm irrigation systems running overtime.
“We try to get an inch of water a week, especially during growing season,” says Bassett.
They pump water from creeks, ponds and anywhere else they can find it. Still, “our electric bill gets pretty high.” It’s a way of protecting their investment because companies don’t insure grass.
The price of sod has increased in the past few years as fertilizer, chemical, labor and diesel fuel prices have gone up.
“We’ve got about 40 employees. We’re mowing 800 acres two to three times a week,” often in 100-degree temperatures, says Bassett. “It takes a lot of people to do all that, a lot of equipment. We’re starting from bare dirt all the way to delivering and collecting the money.”
Decades ago, sod growers would spread fertilizer everywhere and hope for the best. Now, grid soil sampling reveals what’s needed where. Other changes through the years include better irrigation and chemical-spreading drones. Harvesting machines, not sweaty men with machetes, cut sod into slabs and 42-inch rolls.
Beck’s is fortunate to have a world-class agricultural research university with its own turfgrass management program just down the road, Bassett says.
“We’re only seven or eight miles from Auburn University. Auburn does a lot of research out here,” Bassett says, such as a recent nutsedge test trial. Students visit throughout the academic year to see a working sod farm in operation. The AU Turfgrass Club met at Beck’s last spring.

Steve Hague, head of Auburn’s Department of Crop, Soil and Environmental Sciences, called Beck’s an integral part of the Auburn turfgrass program.
“They provide a valuable research site for Dr. Scott McElroy’s weed science program,” Hague says. “Wayne Bassett keeps us in touch with the trends and needs of the turfgrass industry in Alabama. In addition, they provide meeting facilities for learning and professional development events for Auburn students.”
Beck’s Turf grows NorthBridge Bermuda, the type used on both Auburn and Alabama football fields. Beck’s supplied grass for the Jane B. Moore Field, home of Auburn softball, and for the 2003 movie “Big Fish” that filmed in Alabama.
It seems strange to think of grass as a legacy product spanning generations, but with proper supervision and conditions it can be.
“Most of our grasses have been around for a long time,” Bassett says.
A Birmingham homeowner wanted to replace some damaged Emerald Zoysia purchased from Beck’s in the early 1950s. The replacement sod Beck’s sent, the customer reported, matched perfectly 50 years later.
The Wildlife Group Nursery division of Beck’s sells nut and fruit trees used by hunters to make land attractive to animals. Apparently, deer can’t resist a charcuterie with apples, pears and more, which can turn private hunting property into a whitetail buffet.

Sod isn’t much of a conversation starter, but fruit is another story.
“When you start talking about apples and pears they really start talking,” Bassett says of his customers. “They’ll send us pictures of deer eating the acorns.”
The Beck’s nursery division sells 10 kinds of old-fashioned apples like Arkansas Black, six kinds of crabapples, plums, more than a dozen types of pears, berries, persimmons and “any kind of nut tree we can think of,” Bassett says.
They offer hardy disease-resistant legacy plants chosen with absentee landowners in mind. Like heirloom roses, old plant varieties are naturally resistant to pests and disease. Beck’s’ old-fashioned apples include the Yates, which dates to Georgia before 1860; Carter’s Blue, started by a Montgomery colonel in the 1840s; and the Shell, which originated north of Brewton in the late 1800s.
Planting fruit and nut trees to attract deer and other wildlife wasn’t really a popular idea when Beck’s started doing it, Bassett says, but has really caught on in recent years.
Hunters, he says, “will come by and buy 200 trees, or 500 trees, or a thousand trees and just go plant them in the woods.”
Deborah Storey and Julie Bennett are freelance contributors to Business Alabama. Storey is based in Huntsville and Bennett in Auburn.
This article appears in the January 2025 issue of Business Alabama.