Spring Fertilizer Plan For Fall Slackers?

Kentucky bluegrass, Fescue, Rye and Bent, etc
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Setzer1994
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Spring Fertilizer Plan For Fall Slackers?

Post by Setzer1994 » January 12th, 2018, 7:19 pm

Today's 55 degree weather and melting snow of course got me thinking about the lawn.

This past fall was a complete mess schedule-wise for me, with 5 weddings and a new job eating up basically every weekend. As a result my usual fall fertilizer / winterization plans were unfortunately neglected. In short, I was only able to get my calcitic lime app down, but nothing else. No fertilizer at all went down after the summer, except for one Milorganite app in early September.

So what should be my plan for the Spring? Usually I like to let the lawn wake up a bit and don't put anything down besides pre-M until May, depending on weather. However, I imagine the crowd will be hungry by then and will be yelling for food.

Should I be looking at some heavy Milo? Or even synthetic earlier than normal? Or just let the Spring do its thing and try to not miss the fall app next year?

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andy10917
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Re: Spring Fertilizer Plan For Fall Slackers?

Post by andy10917 » January 12th, 2018, 7:41 pm

Should I be looking at some heavy Milo?
It would be best if you looked at the lawn in the Spring. It will let you know when it is running out of steam (and Nitrogen). Take action when the visual input receptors tell the main processing processing unit between your ears that it's going in the wrong direction.

The use of calendars and crystal balls in January is not a good way to predict April and May lawn conditions. The calendar goes into the compost pile.

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Re: Spring Fertilizer Plan For Fall Slackers?

Post by Green » January 14th, 2018, 7:14 pm

The only real overall guidelines I can think of, and maybe you already thought of them, too, are things like:
-Wait until it greens up fully and the ground has completely thawed. (Personally, I wait until I've mowed a few times if fertilizing in the early Spring.)
-Make sure it's being watered in
-Don't push top growth at the expense of root growth
-Pay attention to your soil test analysis and use fertilizers that will be consistent with your soil plan
-I find smaller apps to be easier to control and tend to yield more predictable results than larger apps of N. You can always add more later but you can't remove!
-Avoid Lime when fertilizing with synthetics, until a couple of weeks have gone by after fertilizing
There are probably a few more, but these are the rules of thumb that popped into my head.

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Re: Spring Fertilizer Plan For Fall Slackers?

Post by Sensi » January 15th, 2018, 6:05 pm

Avoid Lime when fertilizing with synthetics, until a couple of weeks have gone by after fertilizing
Why is that? Is there a reaction between lime and nitrogen? If so, why just with synthetic and not organics also?

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Re: Spring Fertilizer Plan For Fall Slackers?

Post by andy10917 » January 15th, 2018, 10:33 pm

Don't overthink this. It is simple - Lime has a reaction with Urea that causes it to volatilize. End of story.


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OldGlory
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Re: Spring Fertilizer Plan For Fall Slackers?

Post by OldGlory » January 24th, 2018, 2:46 pm

I know you asked about fertilizer but spring gets me thinking about pre-emergents.

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