Best Lawn Food for Summer

Any lawn fertiliser is better than none, as this is when the lawn is mown and used and suffers the most damage. Nutrients are needed to help the grass repair and recover from the activity. It also looks significantly better!

Good Soil Moisture is Needed

The grass plant must be healthy and not stressed by a water shortage to utilise the fertiliser. This enables the grass to take up granular feed through the roots via the soil or directly through the leaves if applied as a liquid. In combination with the sun, the grass will start growing and greening, requiring more moisture, so ensure good moisture when feeding in the summer. If the soil is dry, do not feed. You can feed if the grass is dry but the soil has moisture.

Do I need to Water In?

This shouldn’t be needed if Lawnsmith Granular or Soluble feeds are used if there is adequate soil moisture. The problem starts when you use weed and feed or 4-in-1 products that are fine, granular, or powdery. These need watering as they can be aggressive and damage the lawn in sunny or slightly dry conditions. See When to Water My Lawn after Fertilising.

Granular Food for 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 feed or a feed that contains phosphate 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.

Granular Food for 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 must put them in. This also means that food in sandy soil is slightly stronger than food in clay soil.

In addition to the nutrients found in fertiliser for clay soils above, you also 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.

Soluble Food for all Lawns

Consider a granular feed in spring, summer, and autumn as the main meals, as you or I would have breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Soluble or liquid feeding is the snack you might have between meals. Therefore, the best use of a liquid feed is either as a top-up between feeds from late spring to early autumn or as a summer feed applied every 4 to 6 weeks. Either method offers much flexibility because you can hold off from feeding if conditions become dry.