Here we are, another spring is upon us and winter has ranged from mild to wild across the country. It is important to understand and pay attention to both the temperatures and the rain/snow fall that has happened in the winter months to make plans for your initial “out of the gate” fertilizer applications. Now, because I have readers in all parts of the country, my southern guys need to ignore the “snow fall” portion of this article and focus on temps, rainfall, and sunny days over the last 4 months.

While looking at historical weather data may seem like an over the top challenge for a normal lawn guy, it is vitally important in both your nutrient and budget planning. In fact, the only way that this info will be of any value to you, the reader is if you really want to excel in your program. So let’s look at the environmental aspect of nitrogen usage, depletion, replenishment and how all of these pertain to drought and warmer than average “non-growth seasons,” as well as cooler than average “growth seasons.”

Let’s look at soil nitrate first. In a normal season, nitrate will freely move with water rising and falling as irrigation and rainfall swell the soil and allow for nitrogen to enter plant roots. When the soil is dry, nitrate will remain in place until moisture allows it to freely move.

Ammonia, on the other hand, will take this drying opportunity to escape into the atmosphere through volatilization. The plant will grab what it can as the ammonia releases into the air as well as microbes that are active. The microbial activity will do what it can to latch onto the N for energy during these dry times and tis function can actually lead to a “heating effect” at the soil surface which looks like lack of water. The increased energy that soil life needs to multiply in hot and dry times will rob food away from the plants’ root system if a strong organic matter web is not in place.

To illustrate how these two modes are weather/temperature related, we need to dig into what happens for the turf you manage in times of seasonally challenging weather.

Most of the southeast and east cost of the U.S. experienced heavy drought in 2016. In Georgia for example, this meant an exceptional hardening of the already dense clay soil. This drying made already tightly bound soil become practically water repellant. When the clay began to tighten, the roots started to suffocate, creating very thin grass blades that were unable to translocate any water or nutrients to survive. Many lawns died and are being replaced. The double whammy in this situation is that typically in a drought, homeowners are limited to the amount of irrigation that can be applied as well. Interestingly enough, there is an incredible design to drought in grasslands. In nature, this is a way for soil organic matter to be “driven up” by dying top growth. The biomass on the surface creates a matting effect on the soil to keep it cool while the soil microbes go to work on digesting this easily available food. The resulting effect is an increased water-holding capacity of the soil for the future. Another important side effect of this is burning. In this day and age, fires threaten human life and are fought at the expense of human life. Fires are also fought at the expense of natural processes. In times of severe drought the natural burn down of plant life is vital for soil life. Again, carbon in a non-energy form is put back into the soil for future plant development and increased surface area.

While this is all well and good, it doesn’t address the issue that we’ve faced with drought. Clearly, water is King and needs to be treated that way, but what if the King is away? Well, properly managed soil will rebound the plant life much faster, i.e. soils with higher organic matter and denser roots will be able to “weather the storm” of droughts. By now, everyone knows what we do for building this system through the regular applications of our products, but there is a further catch for recovery and I will get to that in a moment.

Warm winters are also a problem this year. Less than average precipitation via rain or snow has been commonplace in the US apart from the west. This temp and precipitation variance is actually a big problem for those that do soil test based fertility in the fall (farmers). A warm winter does not allow plants to go fully dormant and therefore the soil stays active as well. If the soil stays active, the nitrogen is getting used. While it is being used at a slower rate than during growth months, it is still being used. This leads to a couple of things:

1. Lawns turn green much faster when the weather truly does warm up.
2. Lawns fade much faster because they are now running a deficiency coming into Spring.

I am targeting this to less than average precipitation and warm temps for a reason, the biggest battle to be faced is nitrogen deficiency in the early season and loss of organic matter due to over active microbes. These two things go hand in hand. This winter I began requesting soil samples from many of my new and old customers so that I could get a look at what was happening in certain areas. It wasn’t until the end of February that I really noticed a trend in hard hit dry areas, the OM was up and the nitrate was WAY down. This meant that whatever nitrate had been recycled from decay had been used by soil life and roots for survival.

Being armed with this knowledge, I began to recommend a higher dose of N than we normally do to make up for the deficiencies of the winter. This is going to do a couple of things for the turf health:

1. Gives the plants what they have been starving something to really work with.
2. Gives the soil life some energy that keeps the OM available and Nitrate stable.

So now, we have set something in motion but how much is enough? Considering that most of you don’t run more than one-quarter pound of N at a time, twice that amount would be ideal for this situation. We have the ability to custom Blend our N-Charge nitrogen into the 20+ to get people where they need to be in order to have optimum performance. At this point in the season, it is vitally important to look at what applications you have done in the last 7 months and the departure from normal Winter weather to determine if the first to apps of the year should be adjusted. As per normal, I am here to answer any questions and get you steered in the right direction.