When to start fall lawn care
Your COMPLETE Guide to Fall Lawn Care
the fall lawn care season is upon us and
I've been getting a lot of questions
about what I do as my fall program so
today thought to make one video here
explaining kind of the whole process of
everything that I do in the fall I have
made some videos on these specific
topics in the past and kind of made
individual videos about each one of
those so if you want some more info on
each one of these steps I do have those
from the past but today let's go over
all the steps in one video give you all
the information so that you can improve
your yard this fall
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first thing I want to make mention of is
that this is targeted to cool season
grass it is what I have so if you have
warm season grass you are in the south
and the fall time is really when things
are slowing down you're about to get to
the end of your season and here and fall
for us we are kind of ramping up into a
little bit of a second season so spring
is our most vigorous growth time for
cool season grass and then fall we have
another kind of peak season befall is
actually in a really important time for
our cool season grass if we can take
care of things really push some of the
growth and give it some nutrients here
going into next spring you're going to
realize all of these benefits and all of
the work that you've been doing in the
fall
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we've talked about dethatching in core
aeration quite a bit recently on my
channel but if you want to learn more
about those topics I have some videos
specifically on those topics and quickly
let's just say that this is a great time
in fall to dethatch in core area at your
yard if you have more than a half inch
of thatch which is that organic kind of
build up at the soil it would be a great
time to do that if you have any
compaction going on your in your yard or
you're really wanting to spread things
and push things then core aeration can
help with this as well so these two
processes would be great to do in this
season here probably coming up as quick
as you can get them done because we need
a little bit of recovery time before we
get to the colder temperatures as well
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the main thing that everybody wants to
know about is fertilizer what kind of
used when to apply it and how often to
apply it so let's go over all the
fertilizer things here I'd focus most of
my fertilizing for the year on my cool
season lawn into the fall season I don't
do a lot in the spring and I mainly
focus all my feeding here on the fall
time the reason for this is that the
spring time we're getting a real flush
of growth coming out winter anyway and
if we're doing our fall program
correctly here you're going to notice in
the spring that you're going to have
quite a bit of growth from all the work
that we did in the fall so it's not to
say that you can't fertilize in the
spring but I usually use lighter amounts
in the spring and especially after you
get on this program for a little while
and you continually do this each fall
you will notice that you don't need as
much work in the spring so fall for me
really doesn't necessarily go by a
specific calendar date but wherever you
live in cool season land you just need
to look at what's happening with your
weather and look at what's happening
with the grass so as soon as you start
to see those high 80s mid 80s for
temperatures start to dip into the upper
70s you can start to notice the grass is
getting a little bit more relief and if
you're also getting some rain during
this timeframe and you're going to
notice that things are starting to look
a little bit better and not as stressed
from the summer this is the exact time
when I add my first dose of fall
fertilizer in the past I'd usually have
used milorganite at this time reason
being is that I was using the Lord
Knight in my program this early fall
feeding is still great because there's a
little bit warmer temperatures it helps
that milorganite to break down a little
bit faster but we know that milorganite
has been tough to find recently so if
you can't find something like that you
can find other organic products in the
store you can use those or this year
i've also been using the eight one eight
product on my front yard mainly kind of
testing that out so it might be
something that you want to look into if
you are looking for kind of an
alternative to milorganite
it also has a lot of iron in it gives
you a great green up and it's a little
bit lower nitrogen so we don't have any
risk they're really pushing things
really hard here at the beginning we're
just kind of easing things into the fall
season
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then sometimes the weather just tends to
be delayed and this year kind of seems
to be exactly what's going on in my
exact climate with that if you were
planning on this in the future
look at those or late August times if it
starts to cool down what if it doesn't
right now it's still in the mid 80s for
a lot of days here where I'm at and it's
been very dry for the most part so you
can still put down some of that organic
type fertilizer it's not going to hurt
anything or burn your yard but if you're
not getting the rain it would be
important to get some irrigation on it
to kind of get the yard pushed into the
fall season with that fertilizer at that
time
so let's go over the least aggressive
plan first and then I'll talk about the
most aggressive plan so the least
aggressive plan is going with a half
pound of nitrogen every two weeks so
after you apply that first organic
fertilizer you would come back two weeks
later and we would apply a half a pound
of nitrogen and then two weeks after
that we'd apply another half pound two
weeks after that and that's already
getting us into about mid-october and
depending on where you live the
temperatures are going to start to come
down probably around that time frame and
you're going to start to notice the
grass really slowing down continue that
nitrogen half pound every two weeks
until the grass pretty much stops
growing you'll notice this when you go
out to mow there's really nothing coming
out of the machine or you just don't
really feel like you're cutting anything
off the grass blades that's naturally
when the grass is slowing from the
temperatures and also the lack of
sunlight happening as we near the winter
season
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what'd you use for this fertilizer I'm
not going to tell you there's a specific
thing you have to use I've actually gone
to the store and you store-bought stuff
before every two weeks before and I've
had ok results what I would push you
towards is using a fast release product
if you can because there's really no
point in putting down fertilizer every
two weeks and having a bunch of slow
release in there that is waiting weeks
and weeks to actually release itself
because by that time we are going to be
into winter and it's not really helping
you so there's different things you can
use
so I've some ammonium sulfate which is
2100 that is also a quick release
product and since my pH in my soil is a
little bit high using that will help to
bring it down a little bit as well which
we want to be in the six to seven range
I'm just over seven right now
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these are cheap options and you can go
that route if you would like to
otherwise go ahead and go to a store and
pick up something and when you go to the
store look at the back of the package
and look at the analysis now it's gonna
have some kind of analysis for what is
in their nitrogen why's any other things
sometimes there's going to be phosphorus
sometimes potassium right at the bottom
is going to say how much percentage is
slow-release so if you can find a bag
that has a little of this as possible
that's going to be beneficial for you
I've gone to Menards here locally a
couple times use either their brand or
something similar to it and found some
that were mainly quick release there's a
little bit of slow release in there but
it's not any drastic amount so you could
definitely go that route if you're
looking to buy something in a store
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so how do we figure out how much a half
pound of nitrogen is in the back so
let's just use the ammonium sulfate
example so we have 2100 so we're going
to take point five because we want half
a pound of nitrogen divide that by the
percentage of nitrogen in the bag which
is 21% so point to one point five
divided by point two one is two point
three eight so we need two point three
eight pounds of that bag going into our
spreader for every thousand square feet
so if you have five thousand square feet
just take five times that two point
three eight and that will give you how
many pounds you need to put into your
spreader and you can measure that all
out with the scale you can be as precise
with it as you want I will tell you in
the past that I have not measured things
out and I've pretty much gone off close
to the bag rate and everything is fine
but if you want to understand a little
bit more of that the back of the bag is
going to tell you how many pounds per
thousand square feet it recommends so on
this Menards bag as an example let's
look at this we have 3.2 pounds per
thousand square feet is what it
recommends but they're recommending 3.2
here we can figure out how much nitrogen
that would be going on the ground so you
take 3.2 multiply that times your
nitrogen percentage of 28 so 0.28 and if
we were applying 3.2 pounds of this
product per thousand square feet that
would give us 0.9 pounds of nitrogen per
thousand so all we really need to do
there is dial down our spreader a couple
notches so this one recommends 4.25 for
setting on the scotts which is the
spreader that i used so normally if i
wanted to cut it closer to a half i
would probably bring it down to around
three if that wasn't spreading too much
at that point maybe three and a half and
this is going to get us a close number
what I'm telling you is if you really
want to know what you're placing down on
the ground
I recommend actually measuring it out
and weighing it out but I know that a
lot of you don't have that kind of time
and I know a lot of you aren't
interested in all of those tiny little
details so I just wanted to mention it
is something that I have done in the
past it's kind of looked at the numbers
made a somewhat educated guess on how
close it would be if I wanted to do a
half a pound everything turned out fine
and you're not going over the
recommended rate so you know you're not
going over a pound we're actually going
less so less is better in this case if
you're doing it
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let's say you just got into lawn care
this year I get so many questions from
people that say I just bought a house in
the yard wasn't taking care of whatever
the case is you really want to make some
progress this year then we're looking at
a more aggressive plan so before if we
were thinking that maybe September and
October we're going to be applying 0.5
every two weeks maybe we can get a total
of two and a half pounds of nitrogen
total out of late August to the end of
the season that's a pretty good amount
of nitrogen but we can go higher we're
really trying to push things this is
really the only time I recommend that I
don't do this in my yard anymore I've
added nitrogen enough over the years and
built up things over the years that I
don't need to go this high of a rate for
me and once you have a really nice
established lawn you will not need to do
this either but if you are wanting to
really push things this year and then
instead of going 0.5 every two weeks I
would go 0.5 every week for September
and October that's again my climate
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the goal would be then to get more like
closer to four pounds of nitrogen on
during your fall season now that is a
lot and what's gonna happen during that
is you are going to have to mow and moe
moe moe a lot because that heavy feeding
is going to start to push things in very
quickly and you need to keep up with
consistent mowing so keep that in mind
as well if you know you're kind of a
once a week person that mows maybe even
you can't get to it once a week I
wouldn't really suggest going with the
extreme plan because you're going to
have so much growth that you're not
going to be able to handle it if you can
handle it and you can get out there two
times a week or even more every two days
if you can that would be the best case
scenario that's the aggressive plan to
give us a lot more nitrogen this fall
really push things into next season the
last thing for fertilizer in the fall is
the winterizer app this one has been
much discussed over the past few years
different University studies different
things that I've heard about and so last
year I did do an app but I think I moved
it down to a half a pound most people in
the past once the grass would stop
growing completely there was a little
bit of a window of time before the
ground would freeze before you get snow
that you could put down one pound of
nitrogen this was thought to still be
taken up by the root system at that
point so although the grass wasn't
growing it was still taking in that
nitrogen and storing it to be really
ready for the spring season and most of
the time in the spring you would notice
it greening up much quicker and this is
my experience as well with all of our
fall fertilizing in the spring you'll
notice a green up much quicker than the
yards that don't have anything done in
the fall but for me when temperatures
get to around the highs of the upper 40s
that is when my grass completely stops
growing and then that is when I put down
my fertilizer that needs to really be
watered in if possible so time it with
rain or you may have to drag out some
hoses if you don't have an irrigation
system on anymore if you don't have an
irrigation system at all get out your
hoses and water that in before
everything gets
now for our last step let's talk about a
couple of extras that you can do into
your yard that I've been incorporating
the last couple of years so one is humic
fulvic and this year I've been adding
some seaweed as well so these are some
of the simple lawn products that I've
been using and get this little box right
here that we have that we just came out
with these are completely extra but
there's been a lot of talk about
improving your soil and really focusing
on that more than even just fertilizing
and putting a bunch of fertilizer on the
grass so you're interested in those
products so I do have those available
also simple on soil loosener coming out
of our summer season into the fall
season is a great time to apply that
oils here can tend to get dry in summer
a product like that's going to help the
water to penetrate down into the soil be
better used that way so this is a great
time to apply that too if you're
interested in it totally optional steps
fertilizer will get you a long way in
this program and is taking me from a
yard here in 2012 to look like this
and it's taking me up to my yard here in
the last couple years that has looked
like this
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there's many programs out there that you
can use that you will find success in
there's many types of fertilizers that
you can use that you will find success
with I just personally know the results
that I've seen in my own yard with my
own experience if you have questions on
this process let me know in the comments
down below thank you so much for
watching this video and we'll see you
next time
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