Best Lawn Food for Spring

The grass won’t use the fertiliser if it can’t grow due to low temperature, lack of moisture, or air around the roots. If there is adequate water and air at the roots, growth will increase as the temperature rises through the spring.

Fertiliser, water, and air must be balanced. Too little of one of these can cause plant growth, health, and stress issues. Therefore, you can waste a lot of money on adding too much fertiliser when your lawn might need aerating or watering and just a normal high-quality feed.

When feeding in the spring your goal is to provide enough nutrients so the grass can:

• Recover from winter stresses.
• Develop deeper roots so the grass can acquire water more easily as the soil and weather dry during summer.
• Grow leaves, which are the solar power plant of the grass.
• Control moisture loss during drier weather.
• Replace leaves lost when mowing.
• Build disease resistance.
• Enable the grass to recover and repair from use.
• And perhaps the best reason of all ‘To make it look good’
   

Slow-Release Granular Lawn Fertilisers for Spring

Hopefully, you appreciate how important that first feed of the year is. For all this to happen, you ideally need a broad range of nutrients in your fertiliser, which should feed slowly and consistently for at least 2 and preferably 3 months. For less labour and to cover the summer feed, you could use our Extra-Long fertiliser, which will continue to feed for up to 6 months.

Your feed needs to be granular and dissolve into the soil. This helps the roots grow deeper as they search for the food that has dissolved and been washed down into the soil by rain or watering.

Liquid Feeds for the Grass in Spring

These are generally unsuitable until about May for the following reasons:

• The grass is quite hungry in spring and has more demand than you can supply with a liquid lawn fertiliser
• Liquid feeds are best taken in through the leaf, and due to cool spring temperatures, this is less effective
• The choice of nutrients is limited, so the grass may not be getting a good, balanced diet 
   

Feeding Lawns on Clay Soils

Clay soils are slightly richer in nutrients than sandy soils and will also retain many nutrients longer. This means you don’t need such a strong clay soil fertiliser in the spring. This saves money!

Nitrogen (N) and potassium (K) are very important, as are some nutrients that are more like vitamins, such as magnesium (Mg) and seaweed, which improve colour and health.

Feeding Lawns on Loam, Sandy or Chalk Soils

These soils tend to hold air well but water and nutrients less well. Generally, sandy soils will have fewer nutrients over the long term, so you need to add them. This also means that food in sandy soil is slightly stronger than in clay soil.

In addition to the nutrients found in fertiliser for clay soils above, you need phosphate (P). This component helps roots develop, which is not held sufficiently in sandy soils. It is very important for getting the roots down into the water that drains deep in sandy, loam, and chalk-based soils.