Soil test results - Low nitrogen

To be honest, and this is my opinion only, if your ph is good then you don’t need a soil test. I moved in my house, new build, in 2018. Never considered a soil test. Mowed and watered correctly and hammered it with nitrogen.

I have clients that ask for a soil test and I tell them your lawn is not like your kid, it ain’t special. Fert, water, mow, aerate.

21-0-0 ammonium sulfate

SiteOne has bags of them

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I’m reading and listening to some interesting stuff right now where Dr. Shaddux at UF essentially states that nothing matters but nitrogen.

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He’s wrong if he’s not factoring in compaction or soil composition as considerations.

St Aug for example if you have heavy clay compacted soil you can apply nitrogen all you want but the roots won’t find it because they can’t establish properly.

He could well be correct assuming the soil is within acceptable parameters though.

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Yes. What kind of grass do you have?

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St aug

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I assume I would apply a slightly lower rate than the ones they recommend because it’s higher nitrogen content?

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Correct - divide 21 into 100 and that is the amount of 21–0-0 required to supply 1 lb of N per 1000 sq ft of lawn.

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I saw him referencing studies that really downplay the importance of K in bermudagrass. But as you can see, my updated post references soil fertility which would include compaction. Point is, water, sun, temp, matter more.

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With you 100%.

St Aug is just different and any sort of serious compaction makes it impossible to get it thick and healthy in my experience. You see a lot of this happen with new construction where they strip the topsoil and replace it with red clay to get a stable base which is compacted all to hell because they run heavy equipment on it during the build process. Then they just drop sod on top of the clay when they’re done knowing that it’ll look fine long enough to get it sold before it thins out and the new owner doesn’t know why.

I’m a couple seasons in and have already had a pro group come in with great reviews and other lawns that are perfect: looked like crap.

I aerated a couple times then talked with a professor of turf science from UF, followed all of his recommendations for a season from a treatment standpoint: grass still stagnated.

Now I’ve deep core aerated and am going heavy with topdressing and incorporating organic matter. Hopefully it’ll pop.

My other spot has Bermuda growing in sandy soil and it’s hard to even keep up with cutting it.

Bottom line I’ll never opt for St Aug again.

It’ll be Zoysia or Bermuda for me from here on out and I’d only lean Zoysia because I prefer to be able to leave the grass longer than what you typically see from Bermuda.

A middling ph number is 6.5
That’s a good target.