Kentucky Bluegrass sod. What to use for fertilizer?

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Ben21
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Joined: May 26th, 2018, 5:05 pm
Location: Maine
Grass Type: Kentucky bluegrass
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Kentucky Bluegrass sod. What to use for fertilizer?

Post by Ben21 » October 6th, 2018, 2:51 pm

I have Kentucky bluegrass sod and I have hydro-seeded a similar blue grass in back yard that is about two months old, with irrigation. Looking for suggestions on what to use for a first application of fertilizer before the real cold weather comes. One person from the lawn company told me to fertilize this year and then another person told me to leave it alone.
Also looking for suggestions on what to do about where my dog uses the bathroom. The burn spots are spreading fast.
Thank you

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ken-n-nancy
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Re: Kentucky Bluegrass sod. What to use for fertilizer?

Post by ken-n-nancy » October 7th, 2018, 9:13 am

How is the newly-seeded bluegrass doing? Has it grown tall enough to be mowing it? At about what height are you mowing it?

Where your dog uses the bathroom, you're going to have issues. There are a few options:

* train the dog to go somewhere else. I'm not a dog owner, but I've read of others here that trained their dog to go to the bathroom in a non-grass area ( I don't recall what they set up for this; searching in other threads here might show an answer) so that it is off the lawn. I vaguely recall people using a mulch or crushed rock area for this. It sounded like this only required a couple weeks of regular training.

* immediately after the dog goes to the bathroom, douse the area with lots of water to wash the urine down into the soil and get it all off the grass leaves. You only have to do this on the specific spot the dog urinated, but that of course means that you have to be watching to know exactly where that is. With enough water, this will help, although it may not completely resolve the issue.

* find a family member (who lives elsewhere) or friend who wants a dog.

EDIT: Searched and found an old post with advice on the dog training: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1647&p=116296&hilit ... in#p116296

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Dchall_San_Antonio
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Re: Kentucky Bluegrass sod. What to use for fertilizer?

Post by Dchall_San_Antonio » January 8th, 2019, 2:55 pm

There have been university studies done on dog pee. The problem is the excessive amount of urea type fertilizer all in one spot. That overwhelms the soil microbes at that spot and they stop doing what they normally do to process the urea. Once the urea is processed the grass usually turns dark green. You can speed up the process by sprinkling a heaping handful of table sugar on each spot as soon as you see it happening. The sugar slaps the soil microbes causing them to reproduce. The new and greater population of microbes can handle all the urea much faster and everything goes back to normal...except for the fast growing and deep green spot of grass where the dog peed. You could try spreading dry molasses over the entire lawn or spraying wet molasses. The spray rate would be 3 ounces per 1,000 square feet. Using at least one application of organic fertilizer per year should help keep the dog spots from occurring.

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