Most people apply a dose of lawn fertilizer in the spring, followed by one or two more applications during the growing season. If you are going to fertilize your lawn, do not do it too early in the season. The best time for that first application is late spring, just as the green grass is beginning to grow eagerly. In early spring, the grass is putting energy into root development. If you apply fertilizer too early, it will divert the plant’s energy into leaf development too soon.
When to Apply Lawn Fertilizer in Spring
If you fertilized your lawn the previous fall, especially late in the season, then the slow-release function of that fertilizer will help grass growth in the spring. Fertilizer manufacturers or lawn care companies may tell you to fertilize your lawn in early spring, but instead, consider the guidance by turf specialists and agronomists (soil experts) who say to hold off.4
When cool-season grasses “wake up” in the spring, they enter a natural growth cycle when the root system begins growing and building carbohydrate (energy) reserves. Wait until the late spring (late May or early June) just before the heat of summer begins and after the grass is thriving before you fertilize the lawn.
Feeding your lawn at this point prepares the grass for summer. During the hot summer months, the grass will begin to slow down carbohydrate production and begin to utilize the reserves. Adequately feeding 3/4 to 1 pound of slow-release nitrogen will allow the grass to rebuild its energy (carbohydrate) reserves and ward off the stresses of summer, such as drought, heat, traffic, disease, and insects. A polymer-coated slow-release fertilizer can feed the grass for up to 12 weeks.
Feeding the Lawn in the Summer and Fall
Warm-season grasses thrive in the heat of the summer and can be fertilized throughout the growing season. However, cool-season grasses are in a survival mode during the heat of the summer. Refrain from applying fertilizer to a lawn in mid- or late-summer if you live in a climate where cool-season grasses are in your lawn seed mix. A cool-season lawn should need nothing other than water and pest management until September.
Most lawn experts recommend a mild dose of a “turf-builder” fertilizer formulation in the early- to mid-fall, while the turf still has several weeks of active growth before dormancy.5 This application will help build robust root systems going into winter and restart the growing cycle in the spring. You are not looking to return your lawn to the green of summer. Heading into winter, you can expect a natural slowdown of your lawn’s growth and the loss of its green luster.
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