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Starter Fertilizer worked great on established lawn
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Posted by
Idaho_guy none (
My Page) on
Tue, Jun 7, 11 at 11:51
| About 3 weeks ago, I planted some new grass in a portion of my front yard and used some starter fert. I had some left over so i decided to do a little experiment. I put a decent amount of starter fert in probably a 2 square foot area in my backyard. I also did the entire back yard with some scott's turfbuilder. The area I put the starter fertilizer is incredibly lush,green, and thick! The rest of the lawn is just so-so. In fact, I'm not sure the turfbuilder did anything noticeable. I can't believe how beautiful the grass is where I put the starter fert. Was considering putting a good dose on the entire lawn. My questions are:
1. Anyone else had success with a starter fert on an established lawn?
2. Since the starter fert is high in phosphate, is this my lawn's way of telling me that's what it wants instead of nitrogen? |
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: Starter Fertilizer worked great on established lawn
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| Maybe your soil simply lacked phosphate. No way to know without soil test. |
RE: Starter Fertilizer worked great on established lawn
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| You probably also applied too much starter to that small area, hence the deep green color. A 2 x 2 section should get only a small amount of fertilizer, if you figure out how much you used, and do the math on how much it would have been for 1000 sq ft., I bet you have gone over the recommended bag rate. |
RE: Starter Fertilizer worked great on established lawn
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| Yes tiemco, I definitely went over the recommended rate. I was pretty liberal. However........If those are the results, mayabe i should be that liberal with the entire lawn. It would look fabulous. Just wondering if anybody else had tried this and also if the "recommended rate" doesn't produce results then why not use the rate that does. |
RE: Starter Fertilizer worked great on established lawn
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| Sure, over fertilizing will give you super green, thick grass, but usually at the detriment to your lawn's health. Nitrogen forces top growth, if you do it too much, or at the wrong time it depletes the carbohydrate reserves of your grass. Doing it before the heat and drought of summer will make your grass less able to cope with those stresses. Being in Idaho probably means you don't have the heat and humidity issues of some areas, but overfertilizing isn't recommended. Also if you want to supply nitrogen to your lawn there are fertilizers that are specific for that. Starter is high in phosphorus (P), and in many cases you don't need tons of P for an established lawn. Also, P's main effect is on the roots, nitrogen is the main factor in topgrowth. |
RE: Starter Fertilizer worked great on established lawn
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| I would actually be a bit surprised if the soil in Idaho needs P. Most of the intermountain west has plenty of P and K naturally due to the contributions from the mountains, and we should be able to get by using a fertilizer like 21-0-0 or 39-0-0, since N is the only one of the "big three" that we need to add. I suspect that what you're seeing is, as tiemco described, a flush of growth from an overabundance of N. And, as he pointed out, that's not necessarily a good thing long term. |
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