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From the C's Lawn Service Website:
If you care about having a nice looking lawn, fertilizing it is another important step you should take. Sure, you may water your lawn, but there are still nutrients the lawn could use up that aren't common in soil or get used up quickly and need replenishing. Not fertilizing your lawn is a lot like not feeding a pet. They could hunt outside for food, but it is just much easier and healthier if their owner (or C's Lawn Service) takes care of them!
Why Fertilizer Is Needed
Fertilization of your lawn is one of the most basic forms of care, but is also one of the biggest factors in the healthiness of your lawn. Fertilizer strongly contributes to the color, density, uniformity and growth of your lawn. That's great, but what makes it do that?
For starters, grass usually needs around 16 chemical elements to grow. Most of these are either present in soil already or are gathered from the atmosphere, but some need to be supplemented for the lawn to take full advantage of its growing potential.
The vast majority of grass is grown from carbon (C), oxygen (O), and hydrogen (H). These are gathered easily via atmospheric carbon dioxide and water (make sure your lawn is getting at least 2 hours of water per week!). However, if your lawn only recieves these three elements, it's not going to be very green, and will not grow very much; It will be struggling to pull other needed nutrients from the soil which aren't present in proper quantities.
Elements that are used up in large quantities by your lawn, that are not naturally abundant, are nitrogen (N), potassium (K), and phosphorus (P).
Nitrogen is the main ingredient for plant growth and good leaf color, and plants that are almost all leaf (like grass) need a lot of it. Most fertilizer contains a good amount of Nitrogen for this reason. It is used a lot to produce chlorophyll, a substance needed for photosynthesis to occur.
Potassium keeps the grass tough, and able to withstand hot or cold weather. It also helps the grass out with photosynthesis, as well as aiding to take up other nutrients.
Phosphorus promotes good root development, and so is often applied when new grass is installed to aid it in starting. However, it is still applied in small amounts later on to continue healthy root development. Weak roots lead to dead grass! Phosphorus also helps to thicken your lawn.
More elements are needed than just those three, but they should help you to understand why you need to fertilize. These elements are not naturally common in soil, and even when they are, they are not very abundant. In order to have a thick, green, healthy lawn, you need to add them into the soil.
All this can seem intimidating. How much do I need? When do I need it? That's why, when you hire C's Lawn Service to fertilize your lawn, we know just the right combination of elements to apply to help you achieve a greener, healthier lawn!
A Lush, Green Lawn
When you regularly fertilize your lawn, you are saying that you want to have healthy, green, and beautiful grass. This is a wonderful thing! Not only will you be helping out with making your yard look nice, but you will collectively make your street/neighborhood prettier as well. You don't want to be that one person who doesn't care about their yard, and having a green, healthy lawn is a huge part of avoiding that. C's Lawn Service is dedicated to ensuring that you always look like you care about your yard.