Fertilizing Your Lawn When it’s Hot Out

I have a question here, ‘can you fertilize your plants in this hot weather so when should you water and fertilize them?’

So it depends on the type of fertilizer. If it’s a very slow release granular, like the green pellets that we have in our all season fertilizer, that can 100% be done now. It will not hurt the plant, it does not release quickly.

Certain granular fertilizers that you shake down and put around the plant release very quickly and when it’s wet and hot it releases even faster and actually burns the plant. A lot of it depends on the type of fertilizer.

 Now the other type of fertilizer that’s not granular is the one that we mix with water. You take a scoop of the powder, you mix it with the water. That can be done this time of year. Remember, it should only be put on the soil, not on the foliage of the plant, and ideally that’s another one that’s great to do first thing in the morning.

I had someone ask, ‘say that your lawn right now has a lot of clover, can you treat the lawn now? I mean does it work, is it too hot, is it too late?’

That’s a great question, because I need to treat mine. It can be treated now, but when we’re above 85 degrees I don’t want to see anything happen on the lawn other than maybe some water.

 As we cool back down into the low 80s high 70s that’s the perfect time to make an application for the broad-leafed weeds like your dandelions, clover, stick weeds, oxalic, that kind of stuff.

You would actually want to spray it in evening hours when we’re cool anyways after the heat of the day is gone. Six, seven, eight o’clock at night you would make an application, and that way it’s the longest time before it’s going to get super hot again.

Ideally you’d also not want it to rain for 24 hours after application. With the pop-up thunderstorms, it’s hard, usually if it dries on the foliage it’s still effective but if it doesn’t rain it’s even more effective.

We always talk about it at the beginning of the season, everything that you need to do to your lawn, but we’ve never really talked too much about going through the summer.

You definitely could cause damage to the yard if you put it down when we’re 94 degrees 95 degrees 105 degrees heat index, you put it down at one o’clock in the afternoon and the chemical itself can actually burn the grass and you don’t want that to happen.

We’re trying to get the grass to grow and just kill off the weeds. It can be done this time of year, you just want to be smart about how you do it. You do it late in the evening hours. That’s when the pores of the plant are opening up to drink to do it anyway, so it’s going to be more effective doing it that time of the day and I try never to spray when we’re going to be above 85.

There’s some fertilizers like a simple 12-12-12 that’ll release in seven to ten days. When it’s hot like this you can actually put a handful of 12-12-12 on a concrete driveway, wet it down and stand back and watch the vapor rise off the fertilizer. That’s what’s going to burn the plant.

It’s very important to use a coated fertilizer, something that’s a slow release when you’re fertilizing in the hot summer months or just use a liquid fertilizer. Now our Rohr’s all season fertilizer is coated, and it can literally lay against the hair roots and never burn the plant. So that’s one of the reasons that we like it, no matter how it’s used or when it’s used it’s not going to cause any degradation of the plant, it’s only going to help.

Questions? Email us at [email protected] or call one of our two locations: Portage (330-499-0101) or Everhard (330-492-1243).