When Should You Water Your Lawn After Fertilizing and For How Long?

Some rules are just made for following.

Always stop at a kid’s lemonade stand.

Water after fertilizing your lawn.

The lemonade thing is easy.

But when exactly do you water after fertilizing? And for how long?

Whether you apply your own fertilizer or hire a lawn care company to do it, here’s the deal with watering after fertilizing your lawn.

Why Water After Fertilizing?

Watering after fertilizing washes the fertilizer off of the grass blades and into the soil, where it can get to work nourishing your lawn.

It’s also important because if fertilizer sits too long without being watered in, it can burn the grass.

When to Water Your Lawn After Fertilizing

If your lawn gets liquid fertilizer, wait until it dries before watering, about 2-4 hours.

If it’s granular fertilizer, water right away. One exception: if you also got spot weed treatments at the same time, wait for that to dry before watering, or the water will wash off the weed killer before it can work.

How Long Should You Water Your Lawn After Fertilizing?

The fertilizer and soil should be thoroughly moist, but don’t water so much that the water begins to form puddles. About 20 minutes should do the trick.

You don’t want to wash away all those good nutrients — or let the fertilizer get carried away by the water, where it could contaminate groundwater and nearby streams, ponds or rivers.

If you’re using hoses and sprinklers to water after fertilizing, not an irrigation system, be sure you move them around to provide nice, even coverage over all areas of your lawn.

Let the Rain Help Out

If you can, try to time your fertilizer application just before you expect a rainfall of at least 1/4 inch. Rain provides good, even coverage over the entire lawn.

But if weather forecasters are predicting heavy rain, never mind. That can flood your lawn and wash away the fertilizer.

You’ve Watered after Fertilizing — Now What?

After this initial watering, avoid watering your lawn for a couple days so the nutrients can settle in. Then, return to your regular lawn-watering schedule, and remember these tips:

• Don’t water every day. Water deeply and infrequently. Water too often, and it encourages shallow, needy roots. Water less often but deeply, and roots will grow deeper and healthier — and be happy with less water. Grass needs about an inch of water each week.

• Early morning is the best time to water. It’s still cool, so all that valuable water won’t evaporate in the hot sun. Wrap up your watering as close to sunrise as possible. If sunrise is at 6 a.m., you should be done watering at 6.

See It All On Video

Instructions for watering after fertilizing are included in our customer follow-up videos.

If you are a Lawn Buddies customer, five minutes after our lawn care technician leaves your yard, you’ll get an email with a quick video featuring our technician explaining what they just did and any follow-up tips you need to know.

It’s just one of the ways we make lawn care easy.

Is Your Lawn Ready for a New Best Friend?

Ready to nourish your grass with fertilizer for a green and healthy lawn?

Choose an Idaho Falls or Boise professional lawn care service that bundles your yard’s most-needed treatments into one convenient, no-fuss plan.

Fertilizing, weed control, grub control. Done.

We’ve got your back.

Got a few minutes? That’s all you need to get started.

Fill out the form on this page.
Call us at (208) 656-9131.
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Then kick back and relax in your healthy, thriving yard.

Image Source: Sprinkler Head, Fertilizer spreader