Now that you have established your new lawn, you must decide how much maintenance you want to do. If you want a ‘golf course green’ lawn, you must commit to a high-maintenance program of care. However, this is not necessary to have a healthy and attractive lawn.

Anderton Grass closely monitors the soil for the right nutrients for perfect growing conditions. The following outlines a good program for you to keep that lawn green and healthy. A few hours of work per year will reward you with a thick lush green lawn.

In order to keep your sod green and healthy, you should give it a light application of fertilizer as soon as the soil firms up. Use a triple 16 (16-16-16) to start with.

Different turfgrass species require different amounts of fertilizer and they all need to have the fertilizer at a consistent rate. In other words, don't put down all of the required fertilizer for the year at one time because the plants cannot use it all then and most of it will be lost to leaching or move off-site with rain or soil particles.

The key is to supply adequate amounts of essential nutrients throughout the growing season from April through September in amounts that can be fully utilized by the turf. We base our recommendations on nitrogen because it is needed in the highest quantities by grass plants.

A good schedule to follow for Bermudagrass, Zoysiagrass and St. Augustinegrass is the "Major Holidays Rule" - Divide your total nitrogen requirement for the year by four. Put down this rate of nitrogen on or near each of the four holidays: Easter, Memorial Day, 4th of July, and Labor Day.

Centipedegrass and Buffalograss should not be fertilized more than twice a year.

Most fertilizers are similar and what you really need is nitrogen. You can shop around by finding the cheapest price per pound of nitrogen. When you look at a bag of fertilizer, there are three numbers separated by dashes, which is called the "analysis" of the fertilizer.

It is actually a percentage of Nitrogen, Phosphorous, and Potassium, which are the three nutrients in highest demand by the grass plants. Nitrogen is the first number, then Phosphorous, then Potassium (N - P - K).

Phosphorous and Potassium are also important and it would be very helpful to buy a fertilizer with some of these nutrients included, but you can use a product like ammonium sulfate (21 - 0 - 0) or urea (46 - 0 - 0) for most of your fertilizer needs unless a soil test report shows that the other two nutrients are low in your soil. In many Texas soils, phosphorous is already at high levels and adding more from your fertilizer could actually cause problems.