Tips and tricks to have a lush lawn from Spring - Fall.
A DIY Cool Season Lawn 101
The What, When & Why of Fertilizing Author: Tom Andrews
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Melnor, Inc
The What, When & Why of Fertilizing
“The easiest and quickest answer: mow frequently and water appropriately.”
The first question every DIY'er asks is how to get that deep green lawn their neighbor is dominating them with. The easiest and quickest answer: mow frequently and water appropriately. Mowing Basics Surprised I didn't say "fertilize?" Fertilizing isn't always the answer. If you can get out there and mow 1-3 times per week during the growing seasons, try never to mow more than 1/3 of the grass blade at a time. Your lawn will quickly have a greater advantage and be better off than your neighbor "Bob," who mows once every week to two weeks. This is especially true if Bob always breaks that "1/3rd rule" when mowing.
There are some critical items brought up there that need highlighting first. • Mowing frequently, even if you only cut the tip off the blades, helps promote lateral growth (for certain grass varieties) and a strong root system. • When you break the 1/3 rule, you risk cutting into the plant's crown, causing potential damage, inviting disease, and even killing the grass. • Scalping is when you cut the grass below the plant's crown or down to the soil. While the general rule for cool season lawns is never to break the 1/3 rule or scalping, there are rare occasions where breaking those rules is acceptable. If you are away on vacation and don't have a neighbor to cover you while you're away, breaking the rule to bring you back to your usual cut height is OK. You will want to minimize the harm done to the grass by raising the mower deck as high as possible, then gradually lowering it over the next 2-3 mows to bring it back to your preferred height.
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YOUR NAME Company
“The best advice I would start with for any "newbie" is to get a soil test. To get a soil test, outside of a quick google search, I would reach out to your county/regional extension office. They are the best resource for this topic and just general natural resources in your immediate area.”
It would help if you also considered the peak growing times throughout the year. Remember, we are discussing cool-season lawns (Kentucky Blue Grass, Fescue, and Rye), which have peak growing times in the Spring and Fall. They generally go dormant (not actively growing) in the Winter, and their growth habits either go dormant or slow during the Summer. You can prevent it from going dormant in the Summer by maintaining appropriate watering and mowing. Below I will provide rough ideas I have found on how I tackle each season when it comes to fertilizing, mowing, and watering. But keep in mind that these are "lawncare 101" recommendations. Later we can dig deeper into the math behind how to apply, specific types of fertilizers (greens grade vs. box store/homeowner grade), and more.
Don’t Forget the Soil Test! Now back to the topic, do you need fertilizers, and what kind? The best advice I would start with for any "newbie" is to get a soil test. To get a soil test, outside of a quick google search, I would reach out to your county/regional extension office. They are the best resource for this topic and just general natural resources in your immediate area. I recommend pulling samples, sending them off, and awaiting the results before you do any fertilizer or soil changes. These tests will provide you with current nutrient areas that are low, high, and appropriate levels for your soil and turf type. Again, your extension office can also be a great resource in interpreting these results. Once you get your results and see areas needing addressing, you can best plan your lawn program for theyear.
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Melnor, Inc
You will usually see on the bag numbers such as 10-10- 10 or similar on starter fertilizers. Those numbers stand for nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, or as some call it: "up, down, and around." Nitrogen promotes upward growth. Phosphorus encourages root growth, and potassium promotes lateral growth (generally speaking). I usually do a starter fertilizer on my first 1-2 applications of the year. The starter allows the grass to wake up slowly. Once the green-up has begun, you can increase the nutrient rates. For example, you can use a fertilizer like a 16-4-8, then even move up to a 24-0-11. You want to remember to ease into it. To get that extra punch of green, you need to look at that iron content on the fertilizer bag to show that domination line. Most bags have rates around 0.5 - 2.0%. Some fertilizers are designed explicitly for that punch of green by including "iron" or "green" in their name.
Spring One of the first things I do in the Spring is walking the yard. I look for trouble areas like disease, bare spots, pick-up sticks, etc. This will help in your program planning for the year. After the yard walk, I grab the rake and do a light raking of the entire yard. Raking lifts the blades smashed in the winter snow and dormancy and increases airflow and sunlight to the whole plant. I like one somewhat aggressive mow to start the year, to cut off the brown tips of the blades. Again, not breaking the 1/3rule. Now that the lawn is clean, it's time for a pre-emergent and fertilizer. For my Spring pre-emergent product, I like a product whose primary active ingredient is "prodiamine." Using pre-emergent helps prevent many weeds, including crabgrass. Alongside that application, I start the year with a low-rate fertilizer, known as a "starter fertilizer."
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YOUR NAME Company
“Mowing in the Spring can be fun. You can learn to master designs with a nice stripe kit on your mower and highlight that domination line with your next-door neighbor, with their lawn full of dandelions. I recommend that a higher cut for cool season lawns is better. “
To help with that quick green-up, you'll want a "fast release" fertilizer with 1 - 5% iron content. Some have much higher iron contents (excess of 10 - 20+ %). While they may sound great, I would use caution and refer to that soil test you took earlier in the year. There is such thing as "too much iron.“ One added product I like to recommend in the Spring is a grub/pest product. While I am a big advocate for pollinators, controlling some of these pests like grubs (Japanese Beetle larvae) will help your lawn and garden in the long run. There are organic options on the market for these, and I've had great success with them. So, if you see grubs in your yard feeding on your lawn's roots, and you do not treat them, they will later become beetles and feed on your garden flowers, such as your roses.
Mowing in the Spring can be fun. You can learn to master designs with a nice stripe kit on your mower and highlight that domination line with your next-door neighbor, with their lawn full of dandelions. I recommend a higher cut for cool-season lawns is better. You can find your recommended height, for your grass type, by reaching out to your extension office as well. One important recommendation is that you do not want to mow right after fertilizing. It is best to mow right before, but if you must or forgot to mow before, you do not want to bag your clippings. Bagging your grass clippings right after fertilizing will risk some of the fertilizer being picked up in the mower.
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Melnor, Inc
Summer No matter how great your lawn looks, Summer is a time to slow down the feeding in the yard or switch fertilizer types. Throughout the year, my preferred fertilizer is in a granular form. During the Summer, I minimize the granular form and add a liquid fertilizer with more "K," or potassium. Potassium helps battle the summer stress. I like to use a granular fertilizer like a starter or even lower nutrient rates, such as a 7-1-2. With that, I will also apply liquid fertilizer with rates such as 0-0-26. The liquid product allows for quicker absorption into the plant, while most (not all) granular products have slower absorption rates. I will only make 1-2 applications of the "high K" fertilizer but spread my low-rate granular applications from every 30-45 days; to every 45-60 days since the lawn growth has slowed during the summer heat. Summer Mowing Tips The most important tip of the Summer, make sure your mowing height is at the highest setting (for those of you "DIY newbies"). This allows the grass blades to shade the roots and keep the roots slightly cooler. Then when you start to notice dry spots in your lawn, you can bring out those sprinklers. Watering is the Key to Summer Survival Watering "deep and infrequent" is critical in your Summer watering. You want to ensure your lawn is getting about 1.5 inches of water per week. Doing this every few days for 10-20 minutes helps encourage deep-root growth.
When you water a ¼ inch per day, your roots begin to be trained to only have short roots because all the water is always at the top of the soil. Deep and strong roots allow them to flourish in extremely hot and dry summers, which pop up late fall freezes. One product I would keep on your radar in the Summer is a granular and/or liquid fungicide. Summer is when funguses tend to pop up and sometimes pop up overnight. Preventative applications of fungicides wouldn't hurt. But if issues start appearing, you can contact your extension office to help identify the problem and provide recommended products to tackle or address it. Just know that not all issues are the same, and while you may think it's a fungus or another problem, your local office will help quickly identify them.
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Melnor, Inc
Note, if you are applying a pre-emergent in the Fall, you do not want to overseed. The pre-emergent creates a barrier in the soil, preventing the seeds from growing strong roots, causing them to either not grow or grow weak and then die in the off-season. Fall Mowing Facts Throughout the year, remember your watering and mowing will pick up in the Fall. You can get back to mowing 2-3 times weekly and lower your cut height to 2.5 - 3.5 inches. I like to take my cutting height to around 2-2.5 inches for my last cut of the year. I find my last cut in SW Ohio as late as early December. By this time, I'm mostly just cutting the tips of the blades off; and cleaning up any remaining leaves that were late to fall. Also, you do not want to mow right after or before a frost. When you start seeing 3-5 days/nights of below-freezing temperatures in your 7- day forecast and noticing the rate of growth of your lawn drastically decreased, that is when I do the last tune-up of my mower for the year and pack it away in the back of my garage for the Winter.
Fall/Autumn If you read everything above, think, "I can mow frequently, I can water appropriately, but I am watching my budget… and can only afford to fertilize 1-2 times a year." The Fall is the prime time for just that route or to ramp up your prior program. Fall is your lawn's "prime time!" You don't want to go overboard, but this is when you can get back to your fertilizing every 30-45 days with a more "normal" rated product. This is when I get back to those 16-4-8 or 24-0- 11 or similar fertilizers. It is also best to over-seed your lawn if you choose to. In the Fall, you can also apply another dose of a pre- emergent with a different active ingredient, such as dithiopyr. You do not want to use the exact product you did in the Spring, as max rates are recommended during application. This will give those pesky weeds a strong "1-2 punch," coming at two different angles.
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Melnor, Inc
“Grab that cup of coffee or favorite beverage and sit back and enjoy your work. Your neighbors will be in envy!”
In Conclusion Do you have to fertilize? No. A strong and appropriate mowing and watering program for your turf/grass type will bring you quick and easy success. To get that added edge over your neighbors, get a good soil test and use your local extension office to provide recommendations off those test(s); and build a smart lawn feeding program. Once you get one year under your belt with your program, year two and beyond, your lawn will excel far better than all your neighbors—even some of those managed by well-known lawn management companies you see driving around your neighborhood.
Grab that cup of coffee or favorite beverage and sit back and enjoy your work. Your neighbors will be in envy!
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109 Tyson Drive Winchester, VA 22603 Phone: 540-722-5600 www.melnor.com
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