When to start fertilizing grass in spring
Spring Lawn Care Tips - When To Start Fertilizing and Mowing Your Lawn In The Spring
hello everyone and thank you for joining
me for this video today we're gonna be
talking about when to start fertilizing
and mowing in your lawn so spring is not
arriving as quickly here where I'm
located in central Iowa as I would like
it to be so hopefully where you're
located things are getting started a
little more quickly but it's kind of
dragging its feet right now as far as
spring goes and the lawns not doing a
whole lot here but I thought it'd be a
good time to talk about some of the
things going on with spring lawn care
and what you need to do in the early
spring I've been getting some questions
about fertilizing about one start mowing
things like that so I thought I would
make a video touching on those topics I
also recently made a video about soil
temperatures and some of those things
can help us make some decisions and if
you're a little bit lawn nerdy like I am
then you might be interested in doing
something like that so check out that
video I'll have a link to it in the
description if you'd like to know more
about taking some temperatures in the
soil so first and foremost what you're
probably eager to get out into the lawn
and that's completely understandable but
when talking about fertilizing there's
one main important thing that we need to
do first and that's make sure that the
ground isn't frozen so we don't want to
be putting any fertilizer on the ground
if it is frozen because it's not going
to do any good it's kind of a waste of
money and also a waste of product that's
probably going to get washed away into
the sewer system this is pretty easy to
tell most people when they're walking on
their lawn will be able to tell if it's
frozen or not at least for the first
couple inches but you can just poke
something into the ground if you have
one of those thermometers like I use in
my soil 10 - it this way as well but
essentially just make sure that the
ground is not frozen at least four to
five inches down into the lawn so then
people have been asking me a lot about
nitrogen in the spring and these are
just my personal thoughts on it but
things that I've done in the last few
years is tried to wake up the lawn
naturally in slowly and what I mean by
that is that I don't put a whole lot of
nitrogen down in the early spring and
the reason that I don't do this is
because what you're going to have happen
is the grass is just starting to kind of
wake up and if you really are forcing it
to wake up with nitrogen then you're
going to get a lot of the top growth
that's happening and you're not going to
get a lot of growth into the soil where
we need to start building those roots so
because of that I don't do much in the
early spring as far as nitrogen if you
wanted to I probably just go with
something a little bit less intense on
nitrogen
this is also going off my lawn where I
did proper fertilization in the fall and
all of that so if you didn't do anything
the fall if you're just getting started
now you could do an early fertilizing in
the spring but just keep that in mind as
the years go by and you start to build
up and do the proper things in your yard
that when you're adding a lot of
fertilizer in the fall this is the best
time to do it for cool season grass then
it's gonna kind of wake up naturally in
the spring you don't need to force it to
do that the other thing people then
asking me about is putting down
milorganite and or putting down
milorganite with fertilizer so again
okay it kind of my same thoughts there
as far as nitrogen goes however
milorganite doesn't work quite as well
in the early spring just for my
experience it kind of breaks down by
microbe activity in the soil which
doesn't happen as much at lower
temperatures so I don't tend to put any
down until about Memorial Day time frame
which is late May or so and that seems
to work well for me however some people
put it down earlier they say that it
works well for them it all kind of just
depends on your area and how quickly
things warm up so if you do happen to
put it down right now not really a big
deal it'll just sit in the soil there
and it will just kind of sit there until
it's ready to be broken down now putting
it down with another fertilizer again I
would just probably try to limit the
amount of nitrogen as far as the
synthetic fertilizer goes so don't put
down something too crazy and then also
put down milorganite with it but at the
same time if you already did that or if
you were thinking about doing something
like that then just remember that
milorganite is probably a little bit
slower right now anyway so you're
probably going to get the results from
the synthetic first the milorganite is
going to kind of sit there and then over
time that will start to break down
slowly again also look at your
fertilizer and hopefully there's some
slow release in there as well because if
you put down something what's called
urea or something that has a lot of just
urea nitrogen in it then that's going to
be the fast release stuff so you're
going to get a real flush of growth for
a week or two and then that kind of just
backs off and so prefer for it to be a
little bit more broad and kind of slow
down a little bit when it comes to the
nitrogen another option for a lower
nitrogen fertilizer would be to use
something like starter fertilizer and
most people think that this is only for
when you're seeding and depends on some
regulations in your area so you might
- look at that but if you want to build
the root zone then this is a good option
as well and for me every pretty much
every fall I do sum over seating or I
have been for the last couple years so
in the spring I usually put down a
little bit of starter fertilizer again
because that grass isn't even a year old
and we want to keep building it before
we get to the summer months so that's a
good option because it has a little bit
lower nitrogen content so we're not
trying to grow the grass too quickly and
I find that to be a good option for me
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so the reasoning again why you might not
want to put down too much nitrogen in
the spring moves us into what we're
talking about on when to start mowing
the reason behind all that nitrogen talk
that I just did is because we don't want
to break the one-third rule as much as
possible and what that means is we don't
want to cut off more than one-third of
the grass blade at a time if you're
going to put down a lot of nitrogen in
the spring then you're going to get that
flush of growth it's going to be a
little bit more difficult to follow this
rule now if you don't follow this rule
all the time it's not the end of the
world
however the grass plant is going to be
the healthiest if we follow this rule
and it's going to have the least amount
of stress when it comes to mowing so
what also happens when you put down all
that nitrogen in the spring is you get
that flush of growth and also what
happens in the spring as most of you
know is typically a lot more rainy as
far as where cool season grasses grow
and because of that then you're going to
get a lot of growth maybe a week goes by
you can't mow it and it's 5 inches 6
inches tall at that point and you're
gonna want to lower it but you can't mow
and you just run into all those things
so that's why again I try to wake up my
grass a little bit more slowly so that
we're not getting so much growth in the
spring that we can't even keep up with
the mowing so 1 2 start mowing is
basically kind of up to you the grass
will tell you right now in my yard you
can tell the grass is kind of a little
bit confused because it's getting a lot
of sunlight or it's getting a lot of
light in general for longer periods of
time but the temperatures aren't really
getting to a point where it should be
growing so it's a little bit confused
I'm getting some green grass growing and
the other day I did a little bit of an
experiment to mow just a few strips in
my backyard we have some cold weather
coming up so I wanted to kind of see how
it's going to react to that to know what
I can do in the rest of my yard so I'd
love to be out mowing but right now I'm
holding off a little bit because of the
weather forecast and speaking of weather
forecasts just for me this is my
personal opinion and things that I
follow but as far as weather goes I kind
of look at the weather forecast for the
next 10 days do I see any low 20s in
there do I see a lot of 20s in there as
far as lows and when I see that I tend
to not want to mow or go out and do a
whole lot in the yard and the reason for
that in my opinion is just because of
hard freeze is still happening and
although I think it could probably
survive those things fine you know the
golf courses and baseball fields and
things like that that are already going
in the springtime right now so if you
probably survived those things with
mowing and doing those things however
I'm just not trying to stress out my
grass as much as possible right now so
it's up to you kind of look at your
spring forecast and see what you prefer
but as far as the mowing goes I don't
like to do too much mowing when I'm
seeing a lot of 20s for Low's now as far
as that first mowing goes what I like to
do a little bit if possible is cut just
slightly lower than I normally would
you're gonna have a lot of that Brown
dormant grass on top and the green
blades are gonna be underneath trying to
get out of there so if you cut that off
a little bit lower first off you're
going to cut off a lot of that Brown and
so the greens gonna emerge and look a
little bit better but secondly you're
also going to be getting a little bit
more air sunlight all those things down
into that new growing grass which is a
very good thing if you can do that
that's kind of personal preference but I
just got a little bit lower and that
helps to get the green up of the grass
going a little bit more quickly
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I hope that covers some of the questions
that you might have had if you have any
additional questions please leave them
in the comment section below thanks for
watching we'll see you next time
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