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| Photo Credit: ©2000 Dolezal Publishing/John M. Rickard |
| Proper fertilization, in addition to good lawn care practices, can keep your turfgrass healthy and help boost your home’s curb appeal. | Think of your turfgrass like a teenage boy – hungry all the time and readily able to convert nutrients to energy. Not many plants can take the regular – often severe – pruning that turfgrass does and still bounce back with such vigor and verve. But like a teenager, turfgrass needs a little help to meet all its nutritional needs. Before you can feed your lawn properly, you need to find out what nutrients it requires. A soil test can help you determine the precise methods and amounts of fertilizer needed to correct any deficiencies in your lawn’s soil. For example, if you find out that your turf is low in the three major elements (nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium), use an all-purpose fertilizer. But if your lawn is only primarily deficient in nitrogen – the most common condition – use a fertilizer that delivers an extra boost of that element. How can you tell what’s in each fertilizer? Just look at the packaging. All fertilizers have an analysis of their contents by percentage of weight right on the package. These typically appear as three so-called N-P-K numbers, which are separated by dashes, like 20-10-5. The numbers relate to the amount of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K). In this 20-10-5 example, the fertilizer mix contains 20 percent nitrogen, 10 percent phosphorus and 5 percent potassium. The remaining 65 percent is inert fillers. Another factor in determining the amount of fertilizer you need depends (at least in part) on your turf type: warm- or cool-season grass. The type of turf also helps determine when to fertilize: For most grasses, late spring or fall are the best fertilizing times, although warm-season grasses require a continual boost from late spring through autumn, and even into winter. And whatever you do, do not fertilize cool-season grasses in midsummer. The types of fertilizers you use and how frequently you use them are often a matter of personal philosophy. Next to pesticide use, nothing in lawn care is quite as controversial as fertilizer. Many gardeners swear by the simplest fertilizing techniques. For example, cutting your grass with a composting mower and leaving the clippings on your lawn can provide 1/3-1/2 of its nitrogen needs for the year. Dethatching and aerating also do a lot to keep the soil’s microbe and worm populations thriving, releasing mineral nutrients naturally from the soil. When you do need to add fertilizer beyond these basic lawn care strategies, you’ll find that fertilizers are available in a wide range of forms. Three popular varieties are bulk granule, water-soluble (foliar) and dry concentrate fertilizers. Follow the step-by-step photos and their captions to learn how to apply each correctly. Combined with good lawn care practices, fertilizing will give your lawn that extra boost it needs to grow lush and healthy. Ultimately, the best and most responsible fertilizing choices and techniques are the ones you make with the health of your lawn and the environment in mind.
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