March is usually the time of year that local garden centers begin major advertising campaigns to sell lawn fertilizers. But depending on the type of grass you have, it may be too early to start fertilizing your lawn. In general, the best time to fertilize a lawn is when it is actively growing.

Fescue should be fed in the fall

Fescue lawns and other cool-season grasses that don’t go dormant should be fertilized in the fall (October) and spring (March). Most other lawns, including bermudagrass, zoysia, centipede and other warm-season grasses that go dormant in winter, should not be fertilized until late spring through mid-summer (May to August). Fertilizing now would be a waste of time and money.

Why shouldn’t you fertilize warm-season grasses when they are dormant? First, when grasses are dormant, their roots are not able to absorb or use the nutrients from fertilizers. By the time the grass does begin actively growing, most of the nitrogen you applied will have been lost from the soil.

Lawn Fertilizing

Don’t feed the weeds

Also, fertilizing while the grass is dormant actually encourages more winter weeds, because you are fertilizing the weeds instead of the lawn. Without competition from the lawn, these weeds will grow faster and become more prolific as a result of dormant fertilizer applications.

Lastly, fertilizing lawns during their transition into dormancy in the fall or out of dormancy in the spring may encourage lawn growth that is more likely to be injured from winter kill. Bare spots and thinning of the lawn as well as delay in spring green-up may occur when lawns are forced to grow when they should be dormant.

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