Can You Fertilize The Lawn in Summer and Not Burn It?

so now that summer is here and temperatures are heating up pretty much everywhere across the country a lot of folks are wondering hey can i still fertilize my lawn when it's hot outside or will that burn it i'm alan hayne the lawn care nut and today we're going to address that topic so hit that like button and let's get into it [Music] so first i want to clarify in this video i'm going to mainly be talking about granular fertilizers i'll do another one where we talk about liquids but it's going to be pretty comprehensive and i'm going to try to give you some logical answers to this right up front but then i'm also going to try to give you some detail on the backside for those of you that want a little bit more context so we're going to talk just about the granulars today by the way this is zoysia right here if you see these these are seed heads nothing to worry about just mow them off mulch them back in so i think the first thing i should do is just address this logically so those of you that want the answer and want to get out you can this grass right here was fertilized on may 30th and i live here in southwest florida just south of tampa bay and on that day it was 91 degrees outside in fact we're well over 80 degrees even in february when we're getting here into june we're obviously in the 90s every single day and you can see this lawn here is not burned even though it was fertilized on a day that got up to 91 degrees and just for the record on that day i fertilized it two o'clock in the afternoon so we were definitely at our high at that point you'll notice wherever you live and whatever part of the country you're in you're gonna see the professional lawn companies out all summer doing applications on lawns so that right there should tell you just as a logical perspective that yeah i guess fertilizing the lawn in the summer isn't going to burn it still not convinced no problem the next thing i recommend you do and i recommend you do this with everything you do in your lawn is to read the label on the product that you're thinking about applying because it will tell you if you shouldn't be applying in the heat i got a couple two tree different fertilizers here one of ours obviously you guys know we launched freedom great summer fertilizer and then i got two store-bought products none of these at all say anything about applying in heat none of them say don't apply when it's hot this could burn your lawn don't apply when heat exceeds 80 none of that stuff it's not on the label at all and the reason it's not on the label is because it's not a concern you have to understand that these big companies that that sell things through home depot and whatever they're really selling to folks that have a lot less knowledge than you guys do and if their product was going to burn the lawn if you applied it in the summer they either just wouldn't sell that product or they would tell you they would certainly tell you that because that's the last thing a big company like that needs is a bunch of burned lawns in the summer so the key is to read the label and see what it tells you about restrictions or concerns or cautions and if it's not there it shouldn't be a concern and just for the record i have read dozens of fertilizer labels in my day and i cannot remember one instance where a fertilizer an npk and micronutrient type fertilizer had any type of restriction on it that had to do with heat or applying in the summer and if you need more convincing i can actually illustrate this to you in an extremely practical way right now it's uh 89 degrees out here can you see that you see that 89 degrees that means that this grass is currently handling 89 degree temperatures and you see it's not burning right it's handling that fine if i come over here in the garage and i grab a little fertilizer this is a little leftover of our starter fertilizer that i have now in the garage these prills are probably 80 degrees or so they actually feel cool uh because they've been in that bag maybe they're 70 degrees doesn't really matter they're definitely inside the garage and they're cooler now if i take these out here and i bring them out here what's the hottest that they're going to get that's right 89 degrees because that's how hot it is out here so if these prills are 89 degrees how would 89 degree prills burn a lawn that's already handling 89 degree temperatures it's like sometimes people think the fertilizer is magic hot bullets or something and it's gonna heat up to some 250 degree lava when you put it out there it's not the case it's a physical thing that can only get as hot as its surroundings just like everything else in the world so there isn't going to be any extra heat generated when you apply outside now some of you might be thinking yeah but alan what if some of those prills actually sit on the grass blades well there's actually three things to think about there number one is they're only going to be 89 degrees but number two without water they're not going to release their nutrient i'll set these right here and you will see i could come back two or three hours from now and they'll still be sitting there just like that they will not have changed it's not like something happens that they break down they gotta have water for that and thirdly i'll show you that the prills don't actually hang up top anyway [Music] i have seen augustine grass which is the fattest grass blades you can get if there was any grass that was going to catch prills and hold them it'd be mine and you will see it is very difficult to find one when you apply pretty much most of the prills they fall down into the turf fall down through the canopy immediately upon impact all right now one thing that i do want to make note of is that if your grass is wet let's say wet with dew in the morning and you apply then then some forms of immediate release nitrogen can stick to the grass blades and that can then cause a release of and we're talking about nitrogen here a release of a high amount of nitrogen because the pearl sticks to the grass blade and there's water on it and the water then releases the nutrient and that can cause some burning of the tips or the blades of the grass however that's pretty rare number one and number two that's easily avoidable do not apply to the lawn when it's wet however you do want to water your treatment in after and again that's because the prills don't specifically stick here when you apply but they will if it's wet so it is okay to water right afterwards and you want to do that to get everything the nutrient released down into the soil where the microbes can do their thing however you don't want to apply to a wet lawn so that's just a little caveat there you can do some burning if you apply to a wet lawn with certain fertilizers now the other thing is though most fertilizers nowadays are 25 or more what we call slow release now you should not be as scared of the word immediate release or quick release fertilizer you shouldn't be scared of that at all you want some immediate release where you want to wait like two weeks for your results no you want your results within three or four or five days right that's why most fertilizers will have some immediate release and then 25 or more slow release but they're not doing that to prevent burning of the lawn they're doing that so your results you know kind of last you know so you get results within a few days but then the slow release which typically it's nitrogen is coated with a polymer or it's sometimes it's coated with urea that makes the release of the nitrogen a little bit slower or time released that's so your treatment can last 35 or even 45 days or there's some that now that are coated where they'll release over six months so think about it in those terms don't be scared of quick release versus slow release those are terms we use but they don't have anything to do with burning the lawn but there is something you should consider in summer when it does come to the nutrient load that you apply you see just because a fertilizer isn't gonna burn the lawn it doesn't mean it's gonna be best for summer so for example with cool season lawns i recommend you guys back your nitrogen down and you do go with slow release nitrogen in the summer again not because of burn but because cool season lawns their growth periods are in spring and fall and in summer they kind of chill so you do want to feed them but you don't want to blast it with a ton of nitrogen when the when the lawn is is kind of suffering from heat and just so you guys know cool season lawns they can do okay over 85 degrees but it starts getting up over 90 and they really don't want to eat they are not looking to do anything but just chill and make it through so you don't want to blast them with a bunch of nitrogen so you use you use slow release lower amounts of nitrogen on cool season lawns in the summer and you go for like higher potassium things that are going to help it through that stress whereas warm season turf you can actually put down quite a bit of nitrogen in the summertime and you should but the way i teach is not to apply giant amounts anyway i recommend like point seven five or three quarter pounds of nitrogen every four to five weeks to keep that nice warm season grass growing so you do want to adjust the fertilizer you use in summer based on your grasses needs and growth habit not about anything to do with burning next some of you will ask alan i know but i've seen burn lawns before and yes you can burn a lawn with granular fertilizer but that's because something was done off label and it's not always on purpose for example if you spill fertilizer in the lawn you spill a pile of it it doesn't matter if it's 70 degrees out or 90 degrees out that spot's going to burn that isn't because of heat though that is because an overabundance of nutrient typically nitrogen was put onto the grass and it just blew it right out it's just too much for it to handle this is exactly why dog pee spots burn dog pee is urea and it gets let out into the lawn and it's concentrated in one spot and it's way too much for that area so the grass just dies that has nothing to do with heat so many of you guys experience dog death spots right after the winter time because it's too much nitrogen nothing to do with heat okay last little piece of advice i want to give you here and this is just kind of related you should never apply fertilizer to a lawn that is completely brown and dormant so it's not going to be so much of a deal here with warm season turf because most of us are grass is not dormant unless we're just zero water but you guys with cool season lawns you're going to be coming into the summer here and some of you you're not going to be able to keep up with irrigation or i don't know we might have a hot hot summer where no matter what happens a lot of your lawns are going to go dormant so if you have a lawn that is dormant in the summer that's okay but you don't want to be fertilizing that because it's just a waste why would you be trying to push a lawn with fertilizer when it's not even growing it's dormant right so what you want to do in those cases is you want to wait until you're able to water your way through it either you get rain or you got your watering down you got new sprinkler system whatever now you're going to start bringing it out of summer dormancy that's when you start fertilizing to support that but definitely don't apply fertilizer to a dormant lawn not because it's going to burn but just because it's just not a smart thing to do so there you go y'all some quick tips on fertilizing in the summer hopefully it takes away some of the fear you have about burning the lawn because that is not a concern just keep going just keep feeding just keep watering and keep mowing and everything will be fine hope you guys have a great rest of your weekend i'm alan hayne the lawn care nut and thank you so much for watching and i'll see you in the lawn [Music] you

Channel: The Lawn Care Nut

Views: 221,883

Keywords: fertilize lawn, fertilize lawn summer, summer lawn fertilizer, burned lawn with fertilizer, summer fertilizer, summer lawn tips, granular fertilizer for lawns, allyn hane, lawn care nut

Id: kBNH1EK-Ad0

Length: 11min 27sec (687 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 13 2021