Lawn care
Best Time of Year To Fertilize Your Lawn
One of the most often forgotten parts of maintaining your lawn is fertilizing it. Even if you remember, there’s still a right and wrong time to do it.
One of the most often forgotten parts of maintaining your lawn is fertilizing it. Even if you remember, there’s still a right and wrong time to do it. Depending on the type of grass you have, this will also change when you should do this task. This can make things confusing, which is why we’re here today. We want to go over the best times of the year to fertilize your grass.
Best Time for Cool-Season Grass
If your lawn contains perennial ryegrass, Kentucky bluegrass, or tall and fine fescues, you’ll need to follow the rules for cool-season grass fertilization. These types are most common in northern states. The ideal temperatures to fertilize them are anywhere from 60 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit. That means you can do it in the spring, fall, or both.
When fertilizing in the early spring, you should only use a light amount of fertilizer. However, in the fall, you can fertilize more heavily. This is because you want to ensure your grass has the strength needed to survive the winter.
Best Time for Warm-Season Grass
For those of you that live down south and have either Bermuda, St. Augustine, or centipede grass, you’ll need to adhere to the guidelines for warm-season grasses. For this type, early summer is typically the best time of year to fertilize your lawn. That’s because you need to make sure the temperature is between 80 and 95 degrees Fahrenheit.
Even with this information, fertilizing your grass just right is a tricky process. If you do too little, it won’t work properly. Too much, and you might kill your lawn. That’s why it’s best to hire a professional. If you require lawn maintenance in Baton Rouge, you’ll want to call Hernandez Lawnscape!
The Time You Should Never Do It
Whether you hire a professional or do it independently, you should never fertilize in the winter. Just because there’s no snow on the ground doesn’t mean your grass is still growing. Once the temperatures drop close to freezing, your grass will go dormant for the season. Fertilizing it at this point will be completely ineffective.
If you live far enough south, your grass won’t be dormant for the whole winter, but since you need to wait for hotter temperatures anyway, fertilizing this time of year isn’t a good idea. The bottom line here is that you never fertilize during the winter.
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Written by Gerardo Hernandez, owner and founder of Hernandez Lawnscape
Gerardo Hernandez founded Hernandez Lawnscape in Denham Springs in 2013 with a mower and a trailer. He still walks every job, draws the landscape designs himself in Morpholio Trace, and diagnoses drainage the practical way: find the last spot to dry, trench from there, and run pipe at a steady fall to a real discharge point.
