The root of the matter

By Paul Schnare

While writing this column, I felt the warm temperatures and saw the beautiful full sun in the sky. I thought, "What a beautiful late summer day we are having." Oops, I looked at the calendar and was brought back to reality. It is early November. Usually by this time the temperatures are in the 40s during the day and often in the 20s at night.

Thinking about the unusual weather we are having, I am reminded of all the rain we had this summer. The unusual amount of rain led to the demise of many cool-season lawns (fescue, bluegrass and rye) in our area due to disease issues. Because of that, I know a lot of homeowners have seeded their lawns this fall to get them back into shape.

I would like to suggest that if you have cool-season grasses in your lawn, whether you reseeded this fall or not, or if you have already fertilized your lawn earlier this fall (or not), apply a fertilizer called winterizer (25-0-6) on your lawn sometime between now and Christmas.

Let me explain. Usually I tell people to fertilize a lawn with a high-nitrogen fertilizer (the 25 in the 25-0-6) if you want to have good foliage and shoot growth during warm weather. If you want to have good root growth in warm weather, you fertilize with a high-phosphorous fertilizer such as a 9-13-7.

The cold temperatures during the winter change the plant's response to fertilizer. During the winter I suggest you use a high-nitrogen fertilizer to improve your lawn. The temperature at the surface of your lawn is usually cooler than the temperature in the soil. If you encourage plant growth with a fertilizer, the grass plant will want to grow, but can't grow leaves and shoots because the temperatures are too cold. So it uses those nutrients to grow good roots during the winter months.

If you can enhance the root system of a cool-season grass during the winter, the result will be a lush, green, thick stand of grass in the early spring. After all, this is the goal of a lawn owner. So get that lawn fertilizer spreader out of the garage and enhance your lawn (when the weather gets cold) with an application of lawn winterizer. It will make all of the difference in the quality of lawn you have next spring.