As the temperatures begin to rise, your lawn is beginning to wake up, but the grass in your lawn isn’t the only thing that wants to grow tall and strong. There are thousands of other seeds that lie in wait in your lawn for the just the right temperature to emerge. Let’s learn how we stop them and what we use to do it.
Pre-Emergents and Fertilizer
FERTILIZER
Your lawn has been sitting dormant all winter long. As the weather gets nicer and Spring begins to arrive, it is time for your grass to wake up and green up. The first product that is applied to your lawn is a fertilizer mixed with pre-emergent. The fertilizer will pack somewhere between 18-20% nitrogen. Nitrogen is the driving factor for the green color, and the growth in grass. This first application of nitrogen will help wake up your lawn and begin to turn green.
PRE-EMERGENT
Pre-emergent is the herbicide that is blended into the fertilizer that gets applied to the lawn. This pre-emergent has one specific job; to stop weed seeds from being able to grow.
Rewind the clock to last year, at the first frost of the season, crabgrass and other grassy weeds began to die. Before this death, they dropped all of their seeds, ensuring that new plants would have the ability to grow next season. Crabgrass plants in particular, drop thousands of seeds per plant. All of these seeds have been sitting in your lawn all winter, and all they need is the right temperature to begin growing. That ideal temperature is when your lawn’s soil consistently hits 55 degrees. When the soil is 55 degrees or higher, crabgrass and other grassy weeds can begin to germinate and grow. This is where pre-emergent comes in.
The pre-emergent applied in your lawn creates a herbicide vapor barrier that stops and kills those little seeds from being able to grow into mature weeds.
The Amount and Timing
Now that we know the nature of these weed seeds and when they begin to grow, that gives us the necessary action steps to take. Our pre-emergent fertilizers need to be applied before the soil reaches the 55 degree mark. This ensures the pre-emergent has time to work into the soil and create the necessary barrier.
At Warren Lawn, we provide lawn care services for Norwalk, Indianola, Winterset and the surrounding areas. When we begin our lawn care season, we make sure that our Round 1 is applied and active before this temperature window arrives. Not only that, but we also implement pre AND post emergents into our second application as well. On Round 2, during and just after the 55 degree temperature marks, we apply a fertilizer that has both pre-emergent control and post-emergent control This means that this product will help snatch and kill any of those seeds that might slip by the first round of pre-emergent. Two rounds or pre and post emergent in the Spring, will give you the best coverage and best chance to win the fight against grassy weeds.
Do you want further information about our fertilization applications? We post videos on a regular basis on our YouTube channel, check us out there to learn more about how we can help you get the lawn you desire! We would love the chance to help you out this season. To chat more about it, visit our contact page!
