Re-Seeding & Fertilizing Your Lawn This Spring
We have another question in our email. This is from Mary. She says, ‘my backyard has been sadly neglected for the last several years. I now want to give it some help. I’m thinking that I need to do some re-seeding and weed killing. Which do I do first?’
It’s a great question. So the springtime is the best time to re-seed because we’re going to have an environment coming up here in the next couple months that is perfect for growing grass seeds. So if the ground’s really compacted, you do want to go out there and probably scratch that up a little bit so that you’re loosening some of that soil where you’re going to do some of the seeding.
But this time of year, we’re also getting what’s called frost heaving, where the ground kind of heaves up from frost and it’s a great way to seed. You can go out and seed on one of those cold mornings and as the sun comes out that the heaved up ground kind of settles back down and the seeds at the perfect depth there to germinate and grow. Now that seed may sit there until we get to the middle end of April, beginning of May, and that’s when the environment’s right for that seed to grow. It will not hurt it.
And anybody that seeded in the fall, understand if you seeded late in the fall, bluegrass takes 21 to 28 days to germinate. So there are still dormant seeds laying there that will come up and thicken the lawn up. So be very careful with step one, if you’re using a fertilizer that says step one on it, most of them have a pre-emergent. What a pre-emergent is, it’s a chemical that kills seeds as they germinate. Do not use that if you’re putting a new grass seed down or if you seeded late in the fall, because it’s going to eliminate that grass seed that’s supposed to come up and thicken it up.
Just use a regular fertilizer, Milorganite would be fine. Early in the early, early season, you could use triple 12. I don’t recommend that later in the year. It’s too hot, it can burn grass out. But this time of year, the month of March and April, you’d be fine with that. Or just use a regular slow-release summer fertilizer made for yards. And we have all that stuff at Rohr’s Nursery at either of the two locations.
Questions? Email us at [email protected] or call one of our two locations: Portage (330-499-0101) or Everhard (330-492-1243).