How Often Shoud You Fertilize Grass?

Fertilizers and Lawns

• Fertilizing lawn grass plays a very important role in building healthy lawns. Fertilization encourages healthy, full and long-lasting grass growth. Fertilizer can also help grasses build up natural tolerances to disease and insect interference over successive generation, not to mention helping your lawn grass avoid the negative effects of extreme weather conditions like drought stress and frost damage. Knowing how often to fertilize your lawn is one of the most important parts of designing a fertilization treatment for the lawn, as fertilizing too often or not often enough can have deleterious effects on lawn grass growth.

Fertilization Frequency

• To a large extent, how often you fertilize your grass is a function of the unique fertilization needs of the specific species of grass you are growing in your lawn. At the very least, however, experts recommend a fertilizer application when you first seed a new lawn. Subsequently, high-maintenance grasses like Kentucky bluegrass and perennial ryegrass should be fertilized once per year. Low-maintenance grasses (red fescue, chewings fescue, hard fescue, etc.) should also be fertilized once per year, though they have different fertilization needs.

Amount of Fertlizer

• The University of Minnesota Extension recommend three to four pounds of nitrogen-rich fertilizer per 1,000 square feet of lawn grass for high-maintenance grasses. Low-maintenance grasses, on the other hand, only need about one to two pounds of nitrogen-rich fertilizer per 1,000 square feet. Keep in mind, however, that these are merely generalized guidelines and that each specific species of grass will have its own fertilization requirements.

Other Fertilization Tips

• The best way to determine what type of fertilizer you should use in your lawn is to have your soil tested by a university extension service or equivalent service. Soil tests can determine the nutrients that you lawn soil lacks the most and thus will help you determine what nutrients need to be present in the fertilizer that you purchase for use on your lawn.