If you do skip it, report back. An otherwise very well-fed lawn will probably be just fine.

In my case, with an extended green season well into January and often into February, I just look at November as the last feeding for the year. The roots are not only active, they're very clearly voracious.

Will do......I been spoon feeding every week since mid sept. Did my last app last Saturday. So I’m officially done for the year. I may cheat and sneak in an iron app though. Lol

I certainly plan on the iron once growth slows! I'll spray when temperatures drop further, but before carting around a wet backpack sprayer becomes sheer torture.

ETA: If you've been spoon-feeding up to last week, then you really did winterize anyway. :-)

Yeah I guess your right...... I should have stopped sooner. You mean average first frost?

Thanks.....great info as usual

morph - what do you use for iron? I'm considering to throw some down as I'm always a little low on iron. I've only ever used OceanGro for iron, which isn't a whole lot.

OG is great for soil-applied iron, as is Milorganite! In terms of soil iron, it's a slow addition, but in acidic soils, you may notice the application taking effect quite quickly. In more neutral or alkaline soils...well, not so much.

I'm fortunate in that my soil resource balances perfectly at a pH of 6.2 (most don't), so you'd think iron would be readily available. Due to the place being a manganese pit (it used to be commercial farmland), that competes with the iron and I had to increase levels to incredibly high to get it to be available at all.

So the preface here is don't knock OG or Milo in terms of iron. They're great to build soil iron and work well over time.

I spray ferrous sulfate heptahydrate (the slightly on the blue side of very pale green stuff) once a year in November, diluted about 8 oz in a gallon of water with a surfactant and some other stuff. I don't remember where I got it, sorry, I bought 100 pounds some years ago and sealed it.

If you search for "ferrous sulfate 50 pounds" in Google Shopping or eBay or other shopping sites, you should come up with plenty of options.

Here's my mix, but it varies by the year and what I feel like doing. I have a 4 gallon sprayer but I'm giving you the 1 gallon recipe to make it easier. Feel free to expand this for your backpack or tank sprayer, or shrink it for your handheld quart sprayer.

Very Cold Weather Iron Spray (55 or Below) For Kentucky Bluegrass Only

1 gallon water

4-8 oz ferrous sulfate heptahydrate

1 oz or so urea or Miracle Gro or other soluble nitrogen source

1 oz or so surfactant (I usually just use sodium lauryl sulfate solution)

(optional) Small Pinch Epsom Salt (for magnesium), 1/8th oz or less

And I'm serious about that title. Don't try 8 oz in warmer weather, or if the weather has any chance of turning warmer or try 8 oz on fescue or rye. Those grasses can turn a weird black-gray and won't recover until spring.

I gave a written limit of 8 above even though I quoted 12 earlier. Try 12 at your own risk.

Ooooo I gotta write this recipe down. What happened to using Ammonium sulfate? Urea is cheaper or readily available ?

If I turn to my left and take one step, I have 125 pounds of the stuff. :-)

You can certainly use ammonium sulfate if you have it, and it would be slightly preferable as some would salt metathesize into ferrous ammonium sulfate and the ammonium will uptake faster. It'll also evaporate faster but such is life.

In this case, the urea is fine as it'll be bound very firmly due to the fact that the ferrous sulfate solution is extremely acidic.

morph - how many sf do you recommend for 1 gallon of solution? My pH is also around 6.0 but last time I checked the iron was still below target. I don't want to overdo it, but was looking for something to boost levels for next year.

Looks like Ace has 4 lb for $7. I think I'd rather pay a little more and use it all up rather than have a 50 lb bag in storage for 10 years. But of course it all depends on the application rate. Also, my front lawn is KBG but the back is a tri mix. You would only use this on the KBG?

For a soil iron boost? Soil apply iron using OceanGro or Milorganite. Spray iron doesn't boost iron levels in the soil very much. That 8 oz per K only applies about 0.4 oz of elemental iron, which works out to 0.25 pounds per thousand. Your OceanGro kicks that in the butt.

Spray is for a fast boost in color for a short time period (or, at the end of the growth season, a longer time period due to the fact that growth stops--I use it as an advantage due to the fact that the darker grass is also grass that absorbs more sunlight and stays warmer, generating its own microclime).

Definitely only use amounts of greater than 4 oz of spray per gallon per thousand square feet on KBG. Amounts of up to 4 oz ferrous sulfate per gallon per thousand square feet can go on KBG, fescue, or rye. Fescues and ryes will tend to discolor oddly when overapplied--it won't kill them or hurt them, but they do look very strange!

And as the above implied, that mix of 1 gallon is targeted for 1,000 square feet. If you wanted to mix it into 2 gallons and spray that over 1,000 square feet, I'm fine with that. This is not an exact science, so long as you get around that many ounces of ferrous sulfate applied to around 1,000 square feet of grass using a reasonable amount of water.

i have a question.......I renovated back in Aug. went from a northern mix to 100% kbg. Turned out pretty good. I got sick of constantly over seeding. I also trained it at around .75” with a manual reel mower. I’m hooked on reel mowing, anyway I read somewhere about when keeping your turf low it loses moisture pretty quick. So I heard about a product called TransFilm. most people know of it from spraying evergreens before winter time. Keeps it from drying out.

So since I’m gonan spray my lawn with it like around Dec. should I apply iron before or after I apply TransFilm?

I’m thinking of adding some PRG next fall. I’ve heard they really compliment each other. What’s your thoughts?

Thanks Sensei Morph

I'm thinking that limiting transpiration on grass is the absolute worst thing you could possibly do, actually. It uses that to moderate temperature, which itself moderates the photosynthetic process.

Mind, in December, that doesn't signify so much (well, on my lawn it could, but not on most others). But that's a death sentence most other times of the year. Beware and be ye forewarned.

Moderation of moisture usage is more easily attained by adjusting the length of the lawn. Longer lawns are less thirsty AND have longer roots that gather more water, so you get the two-fer. They'll self-shade and self-moderate temperatures better, too.

Lecture ends. :-) Spray the iron well before, in November, and give it a couple rainfalls to wash off. I have no idea what impact a highly acidic chemical on the grass will have on the TransFilm. Probably nothing, but you never know.

Oh boy....I had no idea it’s so detrimental to the lawn. So you feel the same way for evergreens? Wish I spoke with you before I ordered a gallon. Well the grass is still growing some, maybe I’ll let it grow out. Might be too late. Oh well lesson learned

" So you feel the same way for evergreens?"

Not at all. Evergreens are...evergreen. Grass will go dormant when the ground freezes, making the TransFilm, at best, useless. Or, if green, it's detrimental as the grass is still active. It has mechanisms to deal with all this stuff and it's used to it--it's a denizen of the high plains, which does this every year.

Evergreens can have issues if the ground freezes to the base of their roots and their tops warm up. They try to photosynthesize and transpire but can't because there's no water coming up from the base, dry out, and winter burn.

Anti-dessicants stop that quite nicely. For evergreens that tend to have this issue, I fully approve of their use. I've used them myself on one evergreen my parents had that did it and they work beautifully.

It's just that grass isn't an evergreen.

morph - last thing. You do add some surfactant to your mix (not listed in your recipe) I assume from what you wrote? Also, what is the purpose of the added nitrogen in the solution?

Crud, yes, I forgot that. Anything will do. I'll go back and edit.

The little bit of N is to help synthesize chlorophyll if it needs it. It shouldn't.