Of course, you know, I’m talking about nurturing a drought-resistant lawn that is beautiful year round, right? The three times to fertilize a Tall Fescue lawn are the beginning of September (with seeding), Thanksgiving, and Valentine’s Day. The first two are most important as they aim at stimulating good, downward root formation. The Valentine’s Day fertilization promotes a hearty top half of the plant. Fertilizing once the weather is warm is a recipe to creating a lawn that grows too fast and requires too much water to live.

In order to fertilize, one needs to evenly put the adequate amounts of fertilizer down. The rules of thumb around here are 75 lbs of limestone per 1000 feet (to bring pH around these pines and azaleas up), 1 lb of nitrogen per 1000 feet, and 6lbs of tall fescue see per 1000 feet (if seeding, but remember that seed placed in the spring never has the chance to grow downward, and will therefore have to be watered all summer).

In order to fertilize correctly, measure the square footage of the lawn. Then look at the fertilizer offered in the store. There are three numbers XX-YY-ZZ, and the first (XX) is the nitrogen. Divide 100 by this amount, and multiply that resulting number by the number of thousands of the lawn’s square feet. This will result in the correct number of pounds of fertilizer to use.

For example:

• 18-24-6 fertilizer is available, and the lawn is 12K square feet.
• 100/18=5.5 lbs per 1,000 sq ft x 12 = 67 lbs of this fertilizer is appropriate for a 12K foot lawn.

Fertilizers with pre-emergent weed killer are most useful for this application during the year, unless one is also seeding (the pre-emergent will kill the budding grass plants).

Hint: Remember that not many pre-emergents will kill the Chickweed that appears for the month of March. Don’t worry about it, as it will die off as April rolls around.

Finally, this is the time to start thinking about getting the lawnmower’s annual service. Spark plugs should be replaced and blades should be sharpened so as to create a clean cut that minimizes grass plant damage. Injured lawns require more water, so it helps to have a well-running mower.

By following these recommendations that were originally set forth by turf grass researchers in Wake County, one should be able to sustain a beautiful, year-round Tall Fescue lawn that only needs minor supplemental watering during a two week period in September, and most importantly, none during the summer’s hottest months.