Feeding Your Lawn with Fertilizer  Feed Your Lawn!
Your lawn is one of the hardest working sections of your garden. Not only does it provide a green base for the borders and beds, it's a place to relax and play on. The children may think of it more as a soccer pitch than your pride and joy. We expect it to look green and healthy yet many people do no more than mow it once or twice a week and wonder why it looks so pale and yellow, if not brown and dead! The trick to a healthy lawn is to feed the lawn correctly. Correct Lawn Feeding with Fertilizer In the spring and summer when the lawn is growing strongly it is producing a lot of leaf growth. The main fertilizer you need for leaf growth is nitrogen as covered in NPK Fertilizers. So go for a spring and summer propriety fertilizer made up with a high level of nitrogen. How to Fertilize Apply carefully according to the instructions. For a small lawn, the best way is to use a soluble fertilizer watered on with a can. With large lawns you can buy a spreader quite cheaply and use a powdered fertilizer. Apply the Right Amount of Lawn Fertilizer Don't be tempted to apply too much fertilizer in one go, read the instructions carefully and double check before applying. If you do apply too much then you are likely to get fertilizer burn and kill off your grass rather than help it grow. If, like me, you realise you have misread the instructions and applied 10 times the amount of lawn fertilizer than you should have, you may be able to save the day. Get the hosepipe out and water the grass thoroughly. Give it a really good soaking and there's a good chance you can wash most of the fertiliser further down into the soil and rescue the situation. It worked for me. Apply Lawn Fertilizer Regularly Don't just apply a lawn fertilizer once in the spring. Use the recommended amount each month to ensure a consistent amount of feed is available for your lawn. You don't just have one meal a year and neither does your lawn. Fall Lawn Fertilizer In the fall and winter your lawn will slow its growth and not need so much nitrogen but it will still need feeding and you should look for a fertilizer mix high in Phosphorus, the P in NPK fertilizers. Phosphorus promotes root growth and this is the time you want your lawn to establish a good root structure to prepare for next year's growth. A lawn with a good root structure will also resist drought an disease better. So, keep your lawn fed regularly with the right type and amount of fertiliser and the kids will have a great soccer pitch for the summer. A well fed lawn also competes better with the weeds, so that's another benefit. | 