Green Healthy Lawn, DIBY Up - Do It Better Yourself

• Posted on 4 March 2025
• By JR
• Posted in Balanced Fertilizer, DIY Lawn Care, Green Lawn, Healthy Lawn, Lawn Care, Lawn Care Tips, Lawn Fertilizer, Texas Lawn Care, Truff Grass Science
• 0

"Stop overpaying for lawn care! This guide breaks down the science of balanced fertilization (the 3-1-2 ratio), explains how to calculate fertilizer application rates, and provides a seasonal schedule for a healthy, green Texas lawn. Learn how to 'DIBY Up' and achieve professional results yourself."

Green Healthy Lawn, DIBY Up - Do It Better Yourself

There are lots of services leaving cards in your door jam and advertising all over the web. They have products and services to sell you. Sure they are doing something, probably mostly good and probably more than they should. Got to have a reason to send the bill. Not to be cynical, just saying that there’s a chain reaction effect of over doing it. Okay maybe a little cynical but, overfeeding your lawn or feeding it at the wrong times will actually reduce the lawn's vigor and lead to a greater susceptibility to disease. But then they would have to treat that, right.

Well, there is always the opportunity to get hands on and, do it better yourself – right. DIBY Up. Fertilizing your lawn in our part of Texas isn't hard. You don't have to watch a rabbit holes’ worth of YouTube videos and decipher which of the ‘Experts' is right. The science of lawn fertilizer was set 40 years ago. Ever wonder why all of the stuff is almost the same when you read the fine print. It's because millions of dollars has been spent in researching what to do and how to do it. Each manufacturer is hitting more or less the same - in the bag chemistry. So let's put down what to use, how much of it, and when to DIBY Up by the science.

First of all, use a balanced fertilizer. I have heard people say that 13-13-13 is balanced. No, it is equal but not balanced. By balanced we mean that it contains the appropriate ratio of nutrition for a healthy lawn. You remember the old food pyramid for a balanced diet that we first saw in Kindergarten. It's that kind of logic, and here it is, 3-1-2.

What? This ratio simply means that you want the fertilizer to contain 3 parts Nitrogen (N), 1 part Phosphorus (P), and 2 parts Potassium (K) in the bag. A couple of examples; we carry MicroLife Organic general purpose lawn fertilizer which has 6(N)-2(P)-4(K), so those of you like me who can't mathematize our way out of a wet paper bag – that’s (2)x3,(2)x1,(2)x2 the 3-1-2 golden ratio times 2 parts of each = our MicroLife 6-2-4. Here is another one we carry, Nitro-Phos Imperial 15-5-10 synthetic lawn fertilizer. You see that golden ratio in there. 5x (3-1-2) ratio. It's not magic, it's years of research. That stuff called science. So the next question that might come to mind is how can 6-2-4 be the same as 15-5-10? Well, that's all about the how much to use business.

In this part of Texas, we want to apply 3-4 pounds per 1000sqft of nitrogen to our lawn per growing season. The season starts late February to early March when the grass wakes up and starts growing and ends in November-ish when it starts going dormant. You don't want to hit it too soon or too late so as not to waste the product and your money or too late for the same reason. It can also damage the grass encouraging diseases to thrive. Brown Patch is one of these.

Each application should provide around 1 pound of nitrogen per 1000sqft, but not more than 2 lbs / 1000sqft. Back to that math and this one is easy, that's 3 applications per year. 3-4 divided by 1. Not hard right. But let’s revisit that, how can the MicroLife and Nitro-Phos be the same question. The answer is in the rate of application.

MicroLife 6 -2 -4 is a 40 pound bag and covers 2000 sqft. That would be 40 lb x 6%(N) = 2.4 lbs of Nitrogen on 2000 sqft or 1.2 lbs per 1000 sqft.

Nitro-Phos 15 -5 -10 is a 40 pound bag and covers 6000 sqft. This one is 40 lb x 15%(N) = 6 lbs of Nitrogen on 6000 sqft or 1 lb per 1000sqft.

Wow, they are putting out almost the same 1 lb per 1000 sqft. And because we are dealing with percentages of a ratio, that Golden Ratio 3 -2 -1, all of the other elements are more or less the same. Makes sense now that we’re in the know. So off to the last part of this and being the lawn guru in the neighborhood.

We said a bit ago that you need 3-4 pounds per 1000 sqft per year, at a rate of 1-ish pounds per 1000 sqft per application. This breaks down into 3 simple applications of beautiful lawn goodness per year. So here’s my nickel on the grass. Fertilizer is expensive, so don’t pay the proverbial middle man to buy a bag or two of it for you, add a surcharge for the road time and break the bank to whirl it around the yard. We are talking about 3 times a year folks, DIBY Up. Apply it; not too early, not too late and once more or less in the middle. That sounds like something out of Goldilocks and it is just that darn simple. Feeding your lawn the right way, will make it grow thick, choking out the weeds and healthy, beating off disease. Do It Better Yourself, DIBY Up.

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