When To Fertilize Lawns In Spring

The first spring fertilizer application is important to the health of both warm and cool season grasses.

In this FAQ, Christina Burton, Maintenance Channel Manager for Horizon, explains how the type of turfgrass you're growing and local weather impacts when lawns should be fertilized in the spring.

Fertilization Timing In The Spring - Video Transcript

We talked in previous sessions about the best time to fertilize your lawn has the most to do with what type of turfgrass you're growing.

So to review, cool season turf is most actively growing and should be fertilized primarily in the spring and in the fall. Kinda avoiding the high heat of summer.

Warm season turf is best fertilized starting in spring and going through the summer.

So when it comes to spring fertilizing and getting a little more specifics, some things to keep in mind:

Cool season turf - If you're in a region where there's frost or snow. You wanna just make sure that you're passed that. You don't want to fertilize any earlier and then again, just getting down before you're approaching the heat of summer.

For warm season turf, there's kinda a misconception that fertilizing prior to the warm season turf coming out of dormancy that you can wake it up so to speak with fertilizer. And that's not actually true.

The rule of thumb is to definitely wait until that warm season grass, like Bermuda, has come out of dormancy and then that's the appropriate time to start fertilizing in the spring.