Question
My place of residence is Virginia, less than a month ago, I over seeded, aerated and fertilized the lawn. At that time, I used Scott抯 starter fertilizer.  Should I spread some more fertilizer over the yard in November? If so, what type of fertilizer will be needed and is there a need to place fertilizer on the lawn each month.

Answer
Fertilizer here, Fertilizer there, we Americans just can't get enough of the F Word, can we?

Do you know who invented Fertilizer, my friend?

The guy was a German scientist.  He figured it out 100 years ago.  He won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for it.  N-P-K.  Scientists suddenly knew how to double and trouble food output.  Then the guy, Fritz Haber, wanted to move onto bigger and better things, so he jumped into Germany's World War I efforts and invented poison gas.  He insisted on being on site at the first battle to use it so that he could watch the results.  Very creepy.

But the N-P-K answered a lot of questions, and helped a lot of farmers grow a lot of food for a lot of people.  Naturally, there were people who wanted to capitalize on this, and Scott's was born.  There were nevertheless problems with this fertilizer, summarized by Dr Ron Nelson: 'Excessive use of Nitrogen reduces Soil fertility, promotes Weed growth, and increases the risk of pests and agricultural diseases...'  You can read his essay 'Can We Feed the World? Is There a Nitrogen Limit of Food Production?' at The Nielsens' Website:

home.iprimus.com.au/nielsens/nitrogen.html

The Scott's product you refer to is a 20-27-5 formula loaded with Nitrogen, superloaded with Phosphorus and seasoned with Potassium.  N-P-K.  Nitrogen isn't the biggest element, but there's a lot of it in their 'Starter Fertilizer'.  After all, green plants gotta have Nitrogen.  You can't build a Chlorophyll molecule with it (C55 H70 Mg N4 O6).  It's critical to their DNA (Adenine, Cytosine, Guanine and Thymine, known as the Four Nitrogen Bases, are at the core of the DNA molecule).

The trouble with all this Nitrogen is that it's a synthetic chemical version of the real thing.  And while the N is fine, the form you get it in, packed in that bag of Scott's, is a chemical Salt.  That's bad for plants when it builds up in your Soil.  It's bad for microbes and Earthworms underground.  And the N in it evaporates practically overnight, with no contribution toward the Nitrogen cycle that would take place in your Soil if you weren't using those products.

They didn't know these things 100 years ago.  But we know a LOT now.  We are light years ahead in biotechnology now compared to just 20 years ago.  Basically, if you leave those microbes alone to do their thing, your Grass will get a LOT of Nitrogen, at a rate that goes up when the weather is warm and slows down when the weather is cool.

The 'P' part of that Starter Fertilizer, Phosphorus, is also important for your Grass.  But most Soil has PLENTY of Phosphorus.  And if you put TOO MUCH Phosphorus into that Soil, you actually trigger DEFICIENCIES of OTHER nutrients that the Phosphorus locks up.  You can avoid this by doing a Soil test.

Let me wind down here.

Grass right now is going into hibernation.  It's Fall, the weather is getting chilly, it is not time to Fertilize.  The reasoning goes that if you Fertilize now with a slow release product, it will still be releasing N in the Spring when the Lawn is stirring from hibernation.  It's much better to count on the underground food factory that we're learning all about and let THEM do all the fertilizing, instead.  Of course, Scotts shareholders should not do that.  But the rest of us MUST.

Recap:

Get a Soil test.
Give Fertilizer away and top dress with Compost and Humus instead.

Any questions?

Time to vote.

THE LONG ISLAND GARDENER