# Fertilizer recommendation



## JRamon (May 14, 2021)

Hello all, looking for some fertilizer recommendations.

They're both cool season grasses, mix of some kind of KBG and TTF, one is my parents lawn they just want it too look better (level 1 on the cool season lawn guide type stuff) size on the front is about 5000 sq ft, size on the back is about 8000 sq ft





Last one is my lawn, or part of it, I have an acre and I'm just trying to make it look nice willing to put a little more work into it but I don't own the land so not a whole lot.



Thanks for the help.

Edit: I should add we live in the middle of nowhere, we have like an ace hardware and a farm supply store (bomgaars) big box stores are an hour away so finding more niche products can be difficult.

And at the same time I work on a farm so I have pretty easy access to spare fert when we're spreading them on corn and soybeans


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## johnklein25 (Apr 22, 2021)

I think you should be able to find what you need at Ace. I grew up in the middle of nowhere so I know what you're talking about. Be careful about using leftover fert from the farm. I imagine some of that stuff is OK to use but some might be really concentrated and could burn your grass.

In most cases, you are a bit low on P, and have enough K. Something like a 25-25-4 from Scotts might be a good idea to bring your P up while not changing K to much. This is normally labeled as "starter fert" 25% N is a relatively high % of N, which means fewer bags to get your lbs per thousand sq ft. Any brand of fert will do, I just mention Scotts because it's normally easy to find.

Check out this article if you want to read about what phosphorus does for grass. https://pss.uvm.edu/ppp/articles/phos.html

When scrolling down your post and looking at the test results. pH looks OK on the top one, but the 2nd and 3rd are running low on pH (Acidic) you should consider throwing down a good dose of lime. I haven't been paying attention to that and my soil pH came in at 5.1 ~ 5.3 which explains some of my issues. The calcium levels look good so you don't need a high calcium lime. Any lime product labeled to "raise pH" should help. My University of MO soil test instructed me to throw down 50 lbs per thousand of lime x 3 doses about 6 months apart, but my soil is mostly clay, I suspect you may have more of a loamy soil, so you might need a bigger or smaller dose than I do. I checked some info that is available at the U of NE extension for what works in NE. They have lots of good info, just like U of MO, but I didn't see any guidance for how much lime is typically used to raise pH. According to some other sources, loamy soil my need heavier doses, and sandy soils would need less.

Here's a link to one article I thought was interesting https://extensionpublications.unl.edu/assets/pdf/ec1275.pdf

https://homeguides.sfgate.com/much-pelletized-lime-per-square-foot-79815.html

pH is important because once you get too far out of the sweet spot, the pH issues limit uptake of N-P-K into the grass, which means applying fert is a waste of time and effort when your pH is too high or low.


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

Two of the reports show the need for lime. I think you should use calcitic lime. Try to find the cheap stuff at the farm store (agricultural lime).

All these need phosphorous. What can you get at the farm store with phosphorus? Triple super phosphate? MAP?

Potassium looks good.

Check the soil remediation guide for rates/products to use.


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## JRamon (May 14, 2021)

@johnklein25 Thanks
you I will read the links provided. And look for that fert, I think Ace has only scotts products.

I'm not super excited about applying lime to the lawn since there's a lot of lawn. The soil test on my garden was worse at 4.7 PH, but its only 250sq feet so not to bad to deal with.

@g-man I'll have to look at the farm supply store, they don't have a whole lot, mostly Scott's, or an off brand that copies Scott's formulas but is cheaper. Milorganite.

But through work, when we're spreading fert on soybeans and corn we use a lot of Urea, MAP, SMK, potash. Though we're done with most of that and the prill size is quite a bit larger, we'll only be doing post emerge spreading of urea going forward.

But in the future if one of those works I can grab some.

We also have co-ops CVA, Wilbur Ellis, but I assume they operate on a large scale and not what I would want to purchase.


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