The Main Ingredients In Your Lawn Fertilizer & How They Help Your Grass
Due to the heat and longer droughts present here in Arizona, lawn fertilization is key to maintaining a strong lawn year-round. Lawn fertilizer typically contains several unique nutrients pivotal to your lawn’s health and development, but there are three main ingredients you could consider essential to your lawn. Those three main ingredients are nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Each one plays a unique role in aiding your lawn’s growth. Nitrogen is essential in forming proteins, which makes it one of the most important nutrients to stimulate growth in your lawn. Phosphorus, meanwhile, helps your grass establish deep and healthy root systems, making it crucial for seedling development in newer lawns. Lastly, potassium helps strengthen your plants for the harsher weather conditions, like droughts, by increasing your lawn’s stress tolerance. All three of them serve different functions, but each of them plays an important role in maintaining a strong and healthy lawn.
Nitrogen Promotes Growth In Your Grass.
The first main ingredient contained in lawn fertilizer is nitrogen. Nitrogen is considered one of the most important nutrients for plant growth. Nitrogen is responsible for the formation of proteins in plants, making it the nutrient your grass absorbs the most to promote growth. In addition to stimulating growth, nitrogen helps improve turf thickness while giving your grass its lush, green color. When your lawn lacks nitrogen, you’ll observe poor growth results, leading to thin turfgrass which becomes more susceptible to diseases and weed infestations.
Phosphorus Helps Your Grass Establish Healthy Roots
The second main ingredient contained in most fertilizers is the nutrient phosphorus. Phosphorus is a nutrient integral to your grass’s ability to store and use energy—an aspect key to photosynthesis. Phosphorus helps your grass establish healthy root systems, aiding in your lawn’s development. Therefore, many starter lawn fertilizers contain higher counts of phosphorus to stimulate root growth for grass seedlings. Fertilizers for already established lawns typically have lower quantities of phosphorus for this reason. With a phosphorus deficiency, your root and stem growth rates dramatically decrease, leading to a thinner lawn.
Fertilizer bags list three numbers representing the ratio of nutrients contained in the fertilizer called the N-P-K ratio. The numbers represent nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium respectively.
Potassium Strengthens Your Grass's Stress Tolerance
The final main ingredient contained in lawn fertilizers is potassium. Potassium is a nutrient that helps strengthen your lawn’s ability to resist diseases while improving its stress tolerance. This makes potassium key to protecting your lawn from stressful weather conditions such as hot and cold temperatures and periods of drought because it helps your grass withstand those harsher weather conditions. Potassium increases your grass’s stress tolerance by strengthening the established root systems to help prevent wilting and discoloring. You may notice lawns deficient in potassium will exhibit browning on the tips of grass blades. Therefore, fertilizers with higher quantities of potassium are perfect to prepare lawns for the winter or summer.
When mowing your lawn, leave the grass clippings on your lawn to recycle nutrients such as nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus back into your soil.
Call Us Today To Enroll In Our Lawn Fertilization Program!
Understanding the main ingredients in your lawn fertilizer and how they can help your grass is important when caring for your lawn. At Little John’s Lawns, we fertilize your lawn every four to six weeks to ensure it continues to receive the nourishment it needs, so it can be strong and healthy enough to deal with the hotter weather and longer droughts. We service commercial, HOA, and residential properties in Gilbert, AZ, and in the surrounding cities like Chandler and Mesa Give us a call today to enroll in our lawn fertilization program.