When to Fertilize Zoysia Grass

Wondering When to Fertilize Zoysia Grass?

Houston Grass South Owner Michael Romine talks about when to fertilize Zoysia grass in this video!  If you have Zoysia grass in your lawn, you want to take good care of it.  Your Zoysia will likely make your lawn the best looking lawn in your neighborhood — especially if your Zoysia grass is from Houston Grass South!  If you have questions or you need some high quality Zoysia grass sod at a great price, please call our office at 281-431-7441.

This is a summary of Michael’s video about when to fertilize Zoysia grass.

When to fertilize Zoysia grass? Well if it’s brand new Zoysia, we recommend you wait four to six weeks after installation and put out a half rate of whatever the manufacturer on the bag suggests.  But if we’re talking about established Zoysia grass, I would say Zoysia requires the same number of fertilizations per year as the St. Augustine. The Bermudas require a little bit more than all of those. So you should fertilize established Zoysia grass two to three times per year.

We Recommend Fertilizing Zoysia Grass in Early Spring, Perhaps Late Spring, and Fall

I like to fertilize in early spring as soon as I’m sure that the last frost has happened. Usually for us in the Houston area and Southeast Texas, I would say early March is probably a fairly safe bet.

When to Fertilize Zoysia Grass
When to Fertilize Zoysia Grass

If you put the fertilizer out there and you get a frost you’ve kind of wasted your money. You’re going to have to fertilize again. If you’re confident that the first frost has passed, you can fertilize, and whatever you do, follow the directions on the bag. Put it out with a spreader, and follow the directions that the manufacturer suggests.

Don’t ever throw fertilizer out with your hand. It will be uneven, you’ll cause all sorts of problems, and it’s bad for the run-off. The fertilizer is going to end up running off in our water system and stuff like that. The little hand spreaders work okay if you have a small area as well.

So I would say early spring, and sometimes I do a late spring right before we get real hot in the summer, say mid to late May. I don’t put any fertilizer out over the summer normally, unless I’m positive that I can get enough water on it as soon as I put it down, because you can burn your grass. If you put fertilizer out and don’t water it in quick and thoroughly, you can burn the grass, and that’s not good either.

Then in September, early September normally, I’ll fertilize again, and the purpose of that fertilization is to give the grass some good nutrition to store up over the winter. And then it’ll help it come out in the spring better, is the reason for that fall fertilization. Even though the grass is fixing to go dormant, you want it to store up its resources so it’ll have something to come out in the spring with. That’s what I would recommend, two to three times per year in those time periods.

At Houston Grass South, we carry the beautiful Palisades Zoysia grass.  If you’re interested in using Zoysia for your next lawn project, please visit our office to check out the Palisades Zoysia sample plot we have.  You can compare the Zoysia to the other grass varieties we carry — our Raleigh St. Augustine, Floratam St. Augustine, Palmetto St. Augustine, TexTurf 10 Bermudagrass and Tifway 419 Bermudagrass.