Conventional wisdom for many is to fertilize their lawn as late into the season as possible. The thought is that’ll make the lawn greener in the Spring.
Years ago, I had a conversation with someone from Cargill that laughed and said that’s how the fertilizer companies try to get one extra sale from each homeowner every year.
A few years later, I asked a PhD that works for one of the local home and garden stores in the Twin Cities, if it was a good thing to fertilize your lawn late in the year. He asked how late? I said – like October/November. He looked around and said, if anyone ever hears about our conversation “I’ll deny it ever happened”
He went on to say the latest you want to fertilize your lawn is about Sept 1-10 in Minnesota. “After that, your lawn starts to go dormant and your not doing your lawn much good. What you want to do is fertilize in early September when you can still provide nutrients that drive the roots deep to not only survive the winter, but have the foundation to green up fast in the Spring. The active ingredients in fertilizer don’t last that long and Fall application has no effect in the spring. The idea of fertilizing later into the Fall was contrived by the fertilizer companies to generate more sales before their revenue goes dormant for the winter too.”
So get the lawn spreader out this week – and git ‘r’ done while it still matters…
