Time line applying Urea after slow Nitrogen

Bermuda, St. Augustine, Zoysia, Centipede, Bahia, Paspalum, etc
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fatuous
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Time line applying Urea after slow Nitrogen

Post by fatuous » April 22nd, 2021, 2:21 pm

Short story long:I have Bermuda grass and I obtained the soil test and it said that my nitrogen and phosphorus was low. They recommended .6lbs per 1000 of N and .9lbs per 1000sqft of phos. So I bought some 18-24-6 fertilizer that says its good for up to 3 months. I put it down a few days ago. When is a good time to begin applying the aggressive Urea application after having applied this fertilizer? I like how cheap Urea is and that it will help me stay ontop of my lawn every week or two applying fertilizer. Whats your thoughts? Thanks. :hello:

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andy10917
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Re: Time line applying Urea after slow Nitrogen

Post by andy10917 » April 22nd, 2021, 5:28 pm

Given the parameters you provided, the Nitrogen is active for three months. Figure that a couple of weeks before that, the fertilizer was done providing Nitrogen from the slow-release, and the grass just hadn't begun fading yet, at three months. You shouldn't ever apply fast-release Urea on top of a still-active slow-release application - that's a recipe for damage. Also, if you're applying every week, the amounts that you're applying are going to be very small (like half-a-pound of Urea per k).

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MorpheusPA
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Re: Time line applying Urea after slow Nitrogen

Post by MorpheusPA » April 22nd, 2021, 7:32 pm

Also, soil tests are unreliable as far as nitrogen levels go. N levels vary by time of day, soil moisture, microbe activity, and so on.

But Bermuda lawns should be fed monthly (or, like you just did, with a good slow N source as per the bag). "Up to 3 months" means "depends on how much rain you get." So unfortunately, it's hard to say that it'll last through July, but you should see the symptoms when it kicks out. The Bermuda will get paler, slow growth, and just not look good. And if it's very dry, it may actually last longer.

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Dchall_San_Antonio
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Re: Time line applying Urea after slow Nitrogen

Post by Dchall_San_Antonio » April 23rd, 2021, 2:52 pm

Hi fatuous, and welcome to the forum. One of the items you were asked to enter when you registered was your location. We use the location to help understand issues the members are having. For example if you lived in northeast Texas, we might assume you deal with rather moist conditions as compared to if you lived in El Paso or Dalhart. We don't necessarily need your street address (unless you are volunteering to host the 4th of July party), but homing in to a ZIP code or town we all recognize goes a long way to us helping you. You can update your location by going back to your account profile.

If you are going to fertilize every week, you're going to be mowing every day to keep up with the growth. We used to have a bermuda sod farmer on the forum, and he recommended fertilizing monthly if you wanted to be aggressive about it, and every 6 weeks for a more normal lawn. Even with that you're going to be mowing 2x to 3x per week.

As for when to start fertilizing in the spring, you can start after you have mowed real grass, not weeds, for the second time. Waiting ensures you are fertilize living roots and not wasting fertilizer on dormant roots.

All the above is about using chemical fertilizers. I would encourage you to make at least one of those applications with organic fertilizer. Continually bombarding the soil with chemistry is very hard on the soil biology which keeps your soil and lawn healthy. If you never used an organic the biology can depopulate which affects the uptake of the chemical fertilizer resulting in using more and more fertilizer to get the same greening effect. Many of us, even many bermuda growers, are firmly in the organic fertilizer camp. I'm not going to twist your arm on that - just putting a little bug in your ear. If it ever even seems like the regular fertilizer is not working, THAT is the time you need a dose of organic fertilizer to repopulate the biology. You'll be shocked at how well that works.

What is your experience level with bermuda? Have you had it for many years, or are you a new homeowner, or what?

fatuous
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Joined: April 22nd, 2021, 12:41 pm
Location: Dallas, Texas
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Re: Time line applying Urea after slow Nitrogen

Post by fatuous » April 23rd, 2021, 3:39 pm

Thanks to everybody for chiming in. I also updated my location on my profile. Ive taken care of my own lawns before but with the occasional watering and mowing. Nothing to serious. This is a new to me home and it had a bunch of crabgrass and weeds. So I put some preemergent on the lawn back in march and sprayed for weeds. I also aerated back in march before the preemergent. I plan on putting some compost at some point in the future to keep apply good organic stuff to the ground. It has some bald patches and thin areas. Thanks for the help again.


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Dchall_San_Antonio
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Re: Time line applying Urea after slow Nitrogen

Post by Dchall_San_Antonio » April 25th, 2021, 4:46 pm

Thanks for updating. That's helpful.
You have bald and thin areas. Are those in the shade? Bermuda needs at least 4 hours of direct sunlight just to be thin, and it needs a good 6-8 hours to become dense. If you have spots which do not get that much direct sunlight, you should consider converting them to flower or something more shade tolerant. A shade tolerant turf alternative is St Augustine and some rare forms of zoysia. The zoysia would blend into the bermuda better with similar blade appearance. St Augustine would eventually take over the bermuda, while the zoysia would simply mix.

Compost is fine, but the application rate is 1 cubic yard (700 pounds) per 1,000 square feet. Whereas the application rate for organic fertilizer is 15 pounds per 1,000 to get the same fertilizer and organic benefit. Compost is an expensive weekend project. Fertilizer is just fertilizer.

There are bermuda people in the lawn forums who fertilize exclusively with alfalfa pellets on a monthly basis. If you look at the ingredients in many organic fertilizers you'll find ground up nuts, beans, seeds, and grains as the main ingredients. These include soybeans, wheat, rice, corn, cottonseed, and alfalfa. You can buy those same ingredients at your local feed store for 1/6 the cost of commercially bagged organic fertilizer. Sometimes they boost the protein with feather meal or other animal byproducts. The highest protein content of these fertilizers are corn gluten meal and soybean meal. I believe you can find corn gluten meal at many of your local feed stores. I would call first to check price and availability. If they give you a choice of the "feed kind" or the "lawn kind", get the feed kind. It is identically the same product without a lawn license. One year I put down CGM every month, and my lawn never, ever, looked better. When I look for it here in the San Antonio area, sometimes they'll tell me they're waiting on a shipment from Dallas, so apparently it is processed in your area and shipped out here to the hinterlands.

Novice. We can help. Bermuda, as you may have heard, is considered a weed by those who don't want it. For those who want it, and want it to look nice, you cannot ignore a few key elements. If you start out with this approach, nobody will suspect you're a novice.

Watering: All lawn grasses need about the same amount of water every week/month. Even bermuda. The mantra is deep and infrequent. Deep means 1 inch all at one time to allow the water to penetrate deeply. If you water 1/7-inch every day, the water never soaks in and the roots accumulate at the surface. All the nutrients down deeper in the soil are wasted. So every time you water it should be a full inch. You can measure an inch using tuna or cat food cans placed around the yard. Be sure to put some in the bare and thin areas. Put out the cans and time how long it takes for your sprinkler to fill all the cans. That will become your watering time from now on. With my oscillator sprinkler on full sweep, it takes 8 full hours to fill the cans. Whereas, high flow in ground systems can fill cans in 20 minutes. You have to do your test for this. Frequency of watering is next. Obviously you cannot water a full inch every day. Frequency of watering goes mostly by air temperature. Sure you can try to take in factors like sun, shade, clouds, wind, soil type, grass type, mowing height, etc., but you would be overthinking it. Focus on the daily high temperature and adjust from there. With temps below 70, deep water once a month. With temps in the 70s, water once every 3 weeks. With temps in the 80s, water once every 2 weeks. With temps in the 90s, water once a week. With temps in the low 100s, water every 5 days. With temps in the 110s, water every 3-4 days. USE THIS AS A STARTING GUIDE and adjust the timing and amount. In no case should you ever water every day or two. This guide is for if you want to have a green lawn. With bermuda you have the option of letting it go dormant without watering. It can look pretty dead and still come back to vigorous growth with just a little rain.

Mowing: Always mow at the lowest setting. Bermuda will take on a horizontal growth habit if you mow low. With the vertical growth, that can feel spiky under foot and is also a thinner turf.

Fertilizer: Discussed above and earlier.

Herbicide: Spot spray weeds in mid April with Weed-b-Gon or equivalent. I avoid RoundUp products as they try to expand their catalog to non-glysophate products. It is far too easy to spray the wrong Roundup product.

Insecticide: Almost never, but if you think you have chinch bugs or grubs, PLEASE take pictures and post them here to get some second opinions. Don't fall for the idea of preventive insecticide applications. Insects are almost never a problem in bermuda. Further, insects are one of the main categories of beneficial critters in your lawn. Preventive insecticide kills those guys off, plus you might not have even needed to use anything if the issue was mis-diagnosed.

Fungicide: Seriously, almost never. Bermuda is not subject to fungal disease, and if you are watering deeply and infrequently, you should never see a serious disease problem. You might get the occasional mushroom after a 3-day rainstorm, but those are not caused by disease. Those are normal from the beneficial fungi living in the soil.

fatuous
Posts: 3
Joined: April 22nd, 2021, 12:41 pm
Location: Dallas, Texas
Grass Type: Bermuda
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Level: Novice

Re: Time line applying Urea after slow Nitrogen

Post by fatuous » May 3rd, 2021, 8:19 am

Hey thanks for the write up, that really helps.

The lawn is on the west side so it gets quite a bit of sun. The bare spots are from crawling crabgrass and dallisgrass I killed in the fall. There was also some leveling I did in feburary with some 50/50 dirt to help some really bad low spots.
It had been raining all of last week, so it greened up a ton and is filling in quickly. I put a dimension pre-emergent in early march and did a second application last week before the rain. I am still seeing some crabgrass pop up so I will have to kill that too.

So I did go ahead and bought some alfalfa pellets but for my plants/garden. When should I start putting the alfalfa on my lawn? I read it takes a while to go into effect and I assume since its not a chemical fertilizer it wont burn my lawn? The organic fertilizer interests me just because I want healthy soil too. Im no expert of course. Thanks again.

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MorpheusPA
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Re: Time line applying Urea after slow Nitrogen

Post by MorpheusPA » May 3rd, 2021, 12:56 pm

You can drop any organic any time soil temperatures are over 50 degrees. For Bermuda, I'd say any time it's in active growth.

It's...well, highly unlikely to burn, let's just say that, at any reasonable level. You'd definitely, with alfalfa, absolutely have to far exceed fifty pounds per thousand square feet to even begin to risk it.

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