Fertilize Your Lawn and Garden

Greenest Grass Around

Spring is here and now is the time to start working outdoors, getting your lawn and gardens to look beautiful. If you're like me, you can't wait to get your fingers in the dirt and you want to get that old brown lawn looking lush and green again. If you live in the western United States, and you know that after October your lawn will become dormant and brown, the following is a 4 step process to help renovate your lawn.

The fundamentals of getting that beautiful yard begins with a spring fertilizer; nitrate and phosphate. When you look at a bag of fertilizer, there are usually two or three numbers on the bag, for example: 30-10-0 which means 30 parts nitrate which is always the first number and 10 parts phosphate which is always the second number. The nitrate greens up the lawn fast and the phosphate establishes a strong root system. This is your spring fertilizer, which should be applied first. A good way to decide when to apply fertilizer is to do it close to the holidays; Easter, Memorial Day, 4th of July, and Labor day.

If you are worried about weeds, you can use a fertilizer with a pre-emergence in it. In case you are unfamiliar with this type of product, you need to know that a pre-emergence keeps seeds from germinating. It does not differentiate between flower, vegetable or weed seeds, so you must be sure that it is not applied in areas where you have flower or vegetable seeds. Many people like to use a weed and feed fertilizer, thinking this will eliminate all the weeds. A weed and feed fertilizer can only be used when weeds are actively growing because the chemical in the product has to attach itself to the weed in order to kill it. If applied before the weeds are growing, you will have wasted your time and your fertilizer.