Community Connections: Master gardener offers grass-growing tips
By Edward Hutchison, Published 5:00 am EDT, Thursday, May 28, 2020
If the thousands of grass plants in your lawn could talk, they’d be saying: “I’m hungry.”
Hungry, indeed. As April was warming, the plants broke out of dormancy by digging deeper into the soil with vigorous root growth, preparing for a hot and maybe dry summer. Feeding grass in March or April can be counter-productive because it “pushes” the plant to grow green rather than grow roots.
The time to feed your lawn is now, as grass is ready for explosive growth. Even though that means more mowing, still feed the lawn now. It’s hungry.
Buying fertilizer is like buying a hamburger at McDonald’s. It feeds you; it lessens your hunger. But, maybe you want something more elaborate: Lettuce, mustard, pickles, cheese, ketchup; so the burger tastes better and gives more satisfaction.
A basic lawn fertilizer is a combination of the three nutrients turfgrass needs to be healthy. Nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium (think: NPK). Nitrogen encourages overall growth and green color while phosphorous helps with root growth. Potassium is kind of Mom and Dad, trying to bring order to the family. Grass needs a bunch of other nutrients that it draws from the soil (and that is another story for another time).
When choosing lawn fertilizer, look for the percentage of each in the bag: Nitrogen is first, then phosphorous and potassium. It will look something like this: 20-5-8. Almost always, nitrogen will be the highest percentage because healthy grass needs a lot of it. Many brands or no-brands of bagged fertilizer omit phosphorous (20-0-6) because grass needs little and because of environmental concerns.
Most folks use a granular fertilizer that is applied with a spreader, either push or hand-held. Push types come as “rotary” in which the granules are spun out and “drop” type in which granules simply fall to grass directly below the bin. This is important: Apply granular fertilizer only when the grass is dry; this enables it to more easily drop to the ground rather than getting hung up on the grass blades, which can burn them. Better yet: Put down fertilizer hours or a day before rain is forecast. The rain will help distribute the granules and get the fertilizer in the soil.
Back to our hamburger and add-ons.
Some brands sell a slow-release option, usually at a premium. This is like slow-release medicines; both release their ingredients over time, rather than all at once.
Another option: Fertilizer with a weed-killer component. This sounds great: Feed the grass and kill the weeds at the same time. Done. Well, not really. My beef with weed-feed products is that these products do not address the lawn’s most urgent need at the time of application. Is the grass hungry or more choked by weeds?
And weed-feed granular products are significantly more expensive than just fertilizer. Here’s what I’d do if my lawn had lots of weeds: Apply, carefully, a herbicide (weed killer) designed for lawns. Most are spray-on. Spray where the weeds are growing when rain is not forecast and do not spray where weeds are not present. as they control only sprouted plants, not unsprouted weed seeds.
What about the “step programs” in which the basic bag of fertilizer has other ingredients to block sprouting of crabgrass seeds and another step with a different NPK analysis and so forth, to be applied at different times of the season to match the lawn’s various needs? This is a great approach, especially if you want to keep things as simple as possible and are willing to pay a premium for the simplicity.
So, think as you would at McDonald’s and choose the burger that best fits your appetite at the moment. But remember: Your lawn is hungry now, so please work to get your first application down by Memorial Day.