Why would you think to apply a starter for the fall. ARe you putting down grass. Why are you buying scotts?

I put down some Scott's "Lawn Pro" 26-0-3 this past weekend. I never use the "Turf Builder" label by Scott's as it costs so much more than the "Lawn Pro".

It was on an end of season sale at my local farm and garden store for $6.99 for a 5000 sqft bag.

Monday night thru all day Tuesday we had a nice soaking rain of about 2 inches. Today my grass is so green...when you look at it...ya gotta wear shades!

Supposedly, what you feed your lawn now can reduce the amount needed in the spring.
That's sometimes difficult to swallow when we see what damage winter has done and we wish to speed up the greening-up of our lawns and so, with high nitrogen type, we give to our lawn generously.

Sometimes I think maybe the feed people have found a good thing...suggesting that home-owners buy fall fertilizer as well as spring fertilizer and so double up their profit margins.

I guess it depends on how good your lawn is now and whether you feel it needs feeding.
Fall rains certainly do make grass grow and we have to decide how much more mowing is necessary before putting the machine to bed for the winter.

iowa50126- If you put down "Lawn Pro" 26-0-3 now it will be gone by winter. The reason for a fall app is to feed the grass through winter (before frozen). That is why they make slow realease ferts. I can put down chelated iron and it looks so dark green it looks brown; but it last for 1 month max and does nothing really.

If I remember correctly, winterizers and starters are both high in P. The thinking behind that is that P helps root development.

I'm assuming we're talking about cool season grass.

Recent research has shown that applying 1 lb of N per 1000 sq ft after the top growth has stopped, but while the grass is still green will lead to much better root growth because the grass is still photosynthesizing and is storing all of the food in the roots. This leads to later fall green as well as earlier spring green. Some people who have used this approach have seen green grass all winter long.

If you have clay soil, you can use a fast release source of N. If you have sandy soil, you want to use something that is slow release, but that does not require microbial action to release the N.

My fertilzer gone by winter?

The soil temps in my part of the US (north edge of zone 5) are now in the 50F's; so my lawn is growing very slowly.

We should see a hard freeze within the next 10 days. Most of my annuals have been hurt by night temps in the high 30F's last week..and will be in the compost bin this week.

Winter, here in northern Iowa, could be here in a matter of weeks.

The deciduous trees here are at the color peak and most of my trees are 75% bare. Locally the corn and soybean harvest is nearing completion.

Our local HS football team has just 2 games left.

So in short ... it's time for my last shot of lawn fertilizer to be on the ground.

bp-
I do not know what high in P means; since most winters I see are like 24N and 10 in P.

The only issue I see applying that much N is you might be putting on way to much for the year and you might be wasting product etc.

Can you tell I don't use the products sold as winterizers? About all I use any more is UCG from Starbucks. When I was using synthetics, I just used ammonium sulfate (21-0-0) because the soil here is naturally high in P and K.

I've lost the links I had to the research supporting using 1 lb of N late in the fall, but the bottom line was that if you put it down while the grass was still green, it would use the N and store energy in the root system. One caveat was that if you have sandy soil, the nitrogen could wash away, so they recommended that the fertilizer should have a fair amount of slow release N. One important note about the slow release portion is that it could not be slow release that is released via microbial activity because that is so low when the soil is cool.