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The Smart Approach to Fertilizing Your Lawn

Making It Grow! Minute logo

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Late March and April are good times to fertilize trees and shrubs but not your lawn. Our warm-season turf grasses, centipede grass, St. Augustine, Zoysia and Bermuda are semi-tropical in origin. Although they’re starting to turn green, they aren’t fully revved up until Mid-May. That’s when your lawn can make the best us of the fertilizer you apply and you’ll reduce your chances of having the soluble nitrogen and potassium leach and possibly cause pollution.

Please don’t just pick up any bag of fertilizer labeled for turfgrass. Centipede needs only 1 to 2 pounds of nitrogen per year for optimal growth while that heavy feeding, fast growing Bermuda grass uses up to four pounds during the growing season – and needs a lot more mowing too boot. Want to use the right amount and blend of fertilizer --don’t guess soil test. 

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Amanda McNulty is a Clemson University Extension Horticulture agent and the host of South Carolina ETV’s Making It Grow! gardening program. She studied horticulture at Clemson University as a non-traditional student. “I’m so fortunate that my early attempts at getting a degree got side tracked as I’m a lot better at getting dirty in the garden than practicing diplomacy!” McNulty also studied at South Carolina State University and earned a graduate degree in teaching there.