Why Fall Is The Best Time Of Year To Fertilize Your Lawn

While many homeowners feed their turfgrass in the spring, it isn't necessarily the best time of year to fertilize your lawn. In fact, if you only fertilize once a year, it's actually best to do it in the fall. Your lawn is usually stressed after a summer filled with heat and possibly dry weather. You want to ensure that it is properly prepared to enter winter dormancy. Fall fertilization ensures cold hardiness, as well as strong roots systems that create lush growth and help turfgrass resist weeds, pests, and more.

If you're feeling a bit fatigued after a summer of garden chores, don't worry. Caring for your lawn in fall is fairly straightforward. To ready the grass for winter, you need to feed, dethatch, aerate, overseed bare spots, and remove weeds and leaves. Fertilizing is the most important of all these fall lawn care tasks. It ensures the grass has the energy to survive cold winter weather. It also gives the lawn a head start on healthy spring growth. By the time the warmer months roll around again, your lawn will be green and dense. You must, however, choose the right fertilizer and apply it correctly.

After several months of enduring summer heat, your lawn may be a bit stressed and damaged. Fertilizing it in fall helps repair this damage and revive the grass before it suffers new injuries in winter. It can help your lawn's density, too. Fall fertilization helps the blades grow in thicker and fuller, filling in bare spots that may have developed due to heat, drought, or heavy foot traffic. With fall's cooler temperatures and fewer sunlight hours, grass growth slows. However, your lawn's roots continue to develop until the first frost. Feeding the grass with vital nutrients can affect how deeply the roots grow. A stronger root system helps control weed growth, so you won't spend all spring and summer hand-picking weeds for a clean and open lawn.

It is especially important to fertilize your grass before winter, which is when it becomes dormant and stops growing. Applying a fertilizer with the right nutrients helps the lawn store energy for the cold weather ahead. This improves its resilience against low temperatures, drought, disease, and pests. Fall fertilization also helps your future lawn, encouraging the grass to green up quickly in the spring. This can reduce the amount of work you need to do on your lawn when temperatures start to climb.

If you want to fertilize your lawn in fall for optimal results, finding the right fertilizer is crucial. Fertilizer formulas feature three numbers that show the ratios of the three main ingredients in the fertilizer. The first number represents nitrogen (N), the second is for phosphorus (P), and the third denotes potassium (K). Nitrogen is the most important compound for fall lawn fertilization because it supports root growth and aids in the carbohydrate storage that provides grass with its winter energy. It also helps to prevent disease and keeps turfgrass green.

For fall fertilization, a formula with a higher ratio of nitrogen to phosphorus and potassium is the best choice. However, the fertilizer should still contain some phosphorus and potassium because they are also essential nutrients. Phosphorus helps with strong root development, disease prevention, and tolerance to heat, cold, and drought. Without potassium, your lawn would struggle to survive cold winter temperatures. It's also a good idea to choose a fertilizer with slow-release nitrogen. By gradually releasing nitrogen, this type of fertilizer provides consistent feeding over time and reduces the chance of overfertilization.