What Does Fertilizer Do for My EMPIRE Turf Lawn?

20 Apr What Does Fertilizer Do for My EMPIRE Turf Lawn?

By the end of this article, you will learn either:

1. how to fertilize your turf on your own or
2. all the reasons you could ever want to justify hiring a lawn service to do it for you

Know your turf

The most important thing in turf care is knowing your turf. Different grasses require different care. A zoyisa grass like Empire Turf likes 15-0-15 fertilizer in the spring and an 8-0-16 in the fall. 

Do you remember how to read a bag of fertilizer?

Empire Turf, for Example

We’ll break it down like this: timing, ratio, and rate.

Timing

Empire Turf will do best when it gets fertilized three times per year: spring, summer, and fall.

Fertilizing EMPIRE Turf

Ratio

Empire Turf prefers a 1-0-1 ratio of nutrients. So, when you are looking at purchasing fertilizer for your Empire Turf, you want the first number to match the last number, with a zero in the middle, like on this picture of a bag of 15-0-15 fertilizer.  In the fall, we recommend you apply a 1-0-2 ratio fertilizer like an 8-0-16 to give the grass extra potassium or winter hibernation.  

Rate

Empire prefers a rate of 3 pounds of nitrogen in total for the entire year.

So for each of the three feedings (spring, summer, and fall) you want to apply fertilizer at a rate of 1 pound of nitrogen in each feeding.

So how do I know how to do that?

Let’s go back to the picture of our bag of 15-0-15 fertilizer. That happens to be a 50-pound bag. As you saw in how to read a bag of fertilizer, the 15-0-15 means that the product contains 15% nitrogen, 0% phosphorous, and 15% potassium.

So, this bag of fertilizer contains 7.5 pounds of nitrogen (that’s 50 pounds times 15% (50 x .15 = 7.5). For an Empire Turf lawn, this bag would be enough fertilizer for 7,500 square feet.