GardenBanter.co.uk - View Single Post - dillo dirt top-dressing -- when?

22-02-2004, 02:37 AM

In article ,
(Doug Lassiter) wrote:

Gee. Didn't think this one was that hard. A previous post in the fall
said "now is a good time", and if not then, then springtime. Yeah, I
get that. I was wondering about a little more precision. I'll go with
late March, and get some holes in the ground before that.

If you use synthetic fertilizer timing is more of an issue: if you
fertilize too early you are feeding weeds because the grass is dormant and
will not respond to the added nitrogen. You need the ground to warm up
considerably for the grass to break dormancy and hence people recommend
adding synthetics after you have mowed the grass once or twice in spring.

When you add something like dillo dirt a very small amount of nitrogen is
immediately available and the rest is made available by microbial action.
This is quite slow so adding it now would not hurt. The microbial action
itself also responds to temperature (higher=more) so in a way it is a
natural time release formula.

Roland