You probably have noticed that mornings are getting chillier and the days are growing shorter. The leaves on the trees have begun their change from green to yellows and oranges and reds. It must be a New England Fall! For homeowners, now is the time to get your lawn ready for the Spring season. It is important to fertilize your lawn before those heavy frosts begin to lay into the land. Plants and lawns hibernate in a way, saving the energy and nutrients given to them in these cold months for use in the spring so they can accelerate their growth and harden their roots.
Why do Plants and Grass Store Food?
When perennial plants like your grass, trees, shrubs, and flowering perennials go dormant for the winter, they rely on the stores of nutrients that they gather in the fall. If the soil that those plants live in contains no nutrients by the fall, the plant can’t adequately prepare for winter.
The winter is an especially inhospitable time for your lawn. To emerge from it in optimal health, your lawn needs to store up energy before the heavy frosts begin to hit. By storing energy, the roots of your grass and plants can enter a dormant state. During this time, plants expend very scarce amounts of energy to stay alive down in their roots and not to the plant above ground. When the spring thaws come, that energy is expended to grow and thrive again.
There is one sure-fire way to ensure your lawn has the nutrition and energy it needs to survive the winter, fertilizer.
Get Some Energy!
There are a lot of fertilizers out there, so how do you choose the right one? A good way to begin is to understand a little about the nutrients that feed your lawn and soil.
Each lawn is a unique experience, but most of them can be summed up with the N-P-K measurements found on every bag of fertilizer. N-P-K stands for:
- N – Nitrogen
- P – Phosphorus
- K -Potassium
For example, a fertilizer that is 16-16-16 contains 16% nitrogen, 16% phosphorus, and 16% potassium, and a 25-4-2 formulation contains 25% nitrogen, 4% phosphorus, and 2% potassium.
Fertilizing gives us an excellent opportunity to work out any deficiencies in your lawn’s nutritional diet. So how do you know if your lawn needs more of one or another? Look for the telltale signs of deficiency.
Nitrogen (N)
Nitrogen is probably the most recognized nutrient for plants. It aids in a plant’s overall growth and health. People know nitrogen as “that thing that makes my grass green” because chlorophyll (the green stuff in plants and grass) is comprised primarily of nitrogen. Even though air is 78% nitrogen, atmospheric nitrogen is unusable by grass. Your lawn needs to absorb it through the soil.
Some signs of nitrogen deficiency include an early browning of grass, dull colors, or brown patches in the lawn.
Phosphorus (P)
Phosphorus is great for the roots of plants but is absorbed slowly. Phosphorus should be applied to your lawn sparingly, as the runoff levels of this nutrient are much higher than both nitrogen and potassium. Take a soil test every 3-4 years to determine the phosphorus level of the soil and adjust accordingly.
Signs of phosphorus deficiency include dull-colored blades and leaves, and purplish stems.
Potassium (K)
Potassium is an excellent all-around type of nutrition that lawns love. Potassium’s main job is to help with the overall health of the plant. It gives the plant a brighter, greener look and helps grass to ward off diseases.
Potassium deficiencies can be hard to spot, but if your lawn looks sickly and a tinge yellow, you might consider getting a fertilizer with a bit more potassium.
Buy the Right Stuff
The Winter Survival lawn fertilizer by Jonathan Green that Koopman sells is a terrific product for fall lawns. It provides a well-balanced formula that is ideal for winter turf protection. Winter Survival’s iron, sulfur and 30% slow-release nitrogen will help to keep the lawn a deep-green color. It is a true fall/winter formula that promotes root growth and stores nutrients for the spring and contains humates for root development.
As always, be sure to carefully follow the spreader settings on your fertilizer’s packaging.
Fall is an excellent time to adjust your pH as well with products like Jonathan Green’s Mag-I-Cal pellets. For less than the cost of lime, you can instantly add humates and calcium to your lawn to unlock the nutrients in your soil. Mag-I-Cal will make your fertilizer more valuable to your lawn.
Fall is also an excellent time to seed your lawn (see our full blog post here). If you are seeding, you should consider using Jonathan Green’s Love Your Lawn – Love Your Soil®. It is an all-natural, organic soil food stimulates soil microbes and creates a biologically healthy soil. Love Your Lawn – Love Your Soil® helps to loosen heavy, hard-packed soils and releases trapped nutrients. It also increases the grasses’ resistance to drought and heat stress. You can grow better turf by creating better soil!
Wrap Up
The best strategy for a healthy lawn or garden is healthy soil. So continue to apply the best organic materials from Koopman Lumber to build a sustainable soil ecosystem for all your plants and lawn. Visit Koopmanlumber.com for more information!
