Fall Feeding

Why fertilize a healthy green lawn in the Fall?  You may have heard this piece of advice from salesmen, landscapers or farmers in the past, but does it really make sense?  After all, the grass is pretty much finished growing for the season by October and the last thing I want to do is encourage more mowing when it’s raining outside.  Besides, holiday shopping is a lot more important than lawn care.  The fact is there are many great benefits to a generous fall feeding sometime between Halloween and Thanksgiving.

 

Firstly, it’s important to know what the grass plant is doing this time of year.  When the day length gets short enough in these northern, cool-season latitudes the grass begins to slow down in top growth and save some of its energy for the frigid weather to come.  It stores food in its root system and the crown of the plant (where roots and shoots meet).  Grass plants make this food by combining the naturally-occurring nutrients in the soil with nutrients added by fertilizing and the sunlight it absorbs. 

It also uses this season to strengthen the cell walls of both roots and shoots much like putting on a thick coat before going out on a cold winter day.  This process is vital to the ability of grass to survive those tough conditions when soils freeze and thaw, rain water saturates the ground and fuel from sunlight is deficient. 

Finally, the crown area is the growing point for next year’s fresh shoots and the grass really packs in the food to these areas where it will be needed to most. 

All this is going on deep inside the grass plant and is not visible without a microscope.  The only thing we can see is modest to stagnant top growth, so its natural to think nothing is happening down there.  Actually, a well-timed feeding at this critical time does more for the long-term color, health, density and disease-resistance of your lawn than any other single activity.  So if you really want a great-looking lawn in the Spring when birds are chirping and mowers are starting up again for the year, don’t forget to feed the grass when it does the most good.