Pick your grass and climate, enter your lawn size, and get a full nitrogen feeding program: how much to feed, when to feed, and exactly how many pounds of your fertilizer to spread.
About this tool: how lawn fertilizer rates workLawn Feeding Steps
The first of the three numbers is nitrogen. Your bag is 24% nitrogen, and every amount below is worked out from it.
Each feeding is 4.2 lb of product per 1,000 sq ft. The bag lists settings for common spreaders. Start a notch low if yours isn't listed.
Spread a strip around the outside edge, then fill the middle in straight rows that just overlap the last wheel track.
Blow or sweep granules off drives and walks back onto the grass. On pavement they wash into storm drains.
A light watering moves it off the blades and into the soil. Skip a feeding when the lawn is dormant or drought-stressed. Feed again on the calendar above.
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Open the calculatorRecommendations are in pounds of actual nitrogen per 1,000 sq ft, because 5 lb of 26-0-3 and 5 lb of 10-0-4 are not the same feed. One application is 0.5 to 1.0 lb N, and the program above is built to stay inside that: a lawn that needs little nitrogen gets fewer feedings rather than weaker ones, because a lighter pass than that is more than a spreader can lay down evenly.
Pounds of product for 1 lb of N = 100 ÷ the first number. So 26-0-3 needs 3.8 lb per 1,000 sq ft, and 10-0-4 needs 10 lb for the same job. Halve it for a half-pound feeding.
| Grass | Typical annual N |
|---|---|
| Fine fescue | 1 to 2 lb |
| Centipede | 1 to 2 lb |
| Buffalograss | 1 to 2 lb |
| Bentgrass | 1.5 to 3.5 lb |
| Tall fescue | 1.5 to 3 lb |
| Kentucky bluegrass | 2 to 4 lb |
| Perennial ryegrass | 2 to 4 lb |
| Zoysia | 2 to 4 lb |
| St. Augustine (Australian buffalo) | 2 to 4 lb |
| Bermuda (couch) | 2 to 5 lb |
| Seashore paspalum | 2 to 5 lb |
| Kikuyu | 2 to 6 lb |
Per 1,000 sq ft, a year (sources). In metric, 1 lb per 1,000 sq ft is about 4.9 g/m², so 2 to 4 lb is 10 to 20 g of nitrogen per m².
Leaving clippings returns a meaningful share of that. Slow-release nitrogen lets you safely apply a higher single rate; straight urea is easy to overdo.
Cool-season grass does its best work in autumn: early September and again late October. Heavy nitrogen in summer heat forces growth under stress. Warm-season is the mirror: late spring through summer, stopping a month before frost. Never feed dormant grass.
Established lawns rarely need it, and many US states and other countries restrict it on turf because of runoff. Apply only on a soil test shortfall or at seeding.