Here is some more reading for you..... Sounds like Zoysia so depending on the cultivar it can come in 1-2 months after several other grasses and you don't fertilize Zoysia until it is 50-75% green anyway otherwise you waste some of the nitrogen. Since you are using 100% slow release, hopefully you will not loose as much as synthetic. Did you do a Soil test? How do you know the ratio of fertilizer to use and at what rate if you didn't? Nobody can tell you this without a soil test. If the soil is nitrogen rich then 5-2-0 works or maybe you need 39-0-0 (slow release), or a 29-0-10 (50% slow release) The soil test will tell all. You can simply go to ACE Hardware or Amazon to get an over the counter soil test $10. It is a less accurate a test than an extension, but gives you a start. Good Luck Brown Grass http://www.garden-counselor-lawn-care.com/why-grass-stays-brown.html Fertilizer 101 http://www.garden-counselor-lawn-care.com/lawn-fertilizers.html http://www.garden-counselor-lawn-care.com/fertilizer-numbers.html http://www.garden-counselor-lawn-care.com/chemical-fertilizer.html Fertizlier Calculator: http://aggie-turf.tamu.edu/aggieturf2/calculators/fertsheet.html Tips if it is Zoysia Grass (know your cultivar) http://aggieturf.tamu.edu/answers4you/mowing.html

I would suggest you not use any broadly applied herbicides or pesticides this year. No sense chancing stressing the turf. and at the very least check the label for advisories regarding applying. A half pound/k of NPK every two weeks applied to dry blades and then watered in until mid June will be beneficial for the sod. As far as fertilizing new sod or grass, what follows is the best advice I've ever found: "The Philes Phertilizer Lecture follows: These new KBG lawns are hungry for fertilizer. Very much like, (and if you renovated, exactly like) a sod farm, those guys that start with bare ground, throw some seed around, and by late July of every year, they are selling product: a deeply rooted, dense intertwined dark green carpet of lush (no bare spots) Kentucky Bluegrass. Now how do they do that every year? (And, of course, the implied question "How come you and I can't do it also?") They do it with frequent, rather than heavy, applications of fertilizer. Literally, every two weeks, a light application of fertilizer. At seeding time, they start with an 8-8-8 or a 10-10-10. Upon the grass reaching the 'first mow' stage, they add Milorganite, and then it's Milorganite every two weeks, as the weather gets warmer. Every two weeks would seem to you (and in the old days, to me) as 'excessive'. It's not. Not only is it not excessive, it may well be Required. There's only one difference between the sod farm, with that lush green grass for sale every year, and the typical homeowner here (I'm leaving out the general public: the public is a 2 or a 3, as you know, and you guys and gals are a 6 or a 7. Twice as good. But I'm trying to get y'alls up to a 9, which is where the sod farm is), and that difference is Frequent Applications of Fertilizer. Especially with KBG, more fertilizer than you are used to putting down is good. A typical homeowner would fertilize once in the fall. Not the first year, but every following year, on these newly renovated (or overseeded) KBG lawns, two full applications are required in the fall. Spring? A lot of people don't like to fertilize in the spring. A KBG lawn requires an application of big-first-number fertilizer, in May. A newly renovated KBG lawn requires yet another application in mid June. That lawn needs the nitrogen, for all the growing, both above, below, and across the ground, that it's wanting to do, and will do, if you feed it. Density? It requires nitrogen. Color? Requires more nitrogen. Aggressiveness? You already know what it requires. Even an old KBG lawn, the Merion sods of this world, needed more nitrogen than they received. As proof, drive through the subdivisions of ten or twenty years ago, and look at the lawns: those lawns were not exactly treated like a sod farm, were they? If you want your new lawn to turn out just like that, here's all you have to do: fertilize once in the fall, and once in the spring. That's it. The results are guaranteed. By now, somebody is saying (and should be), "Is it possible to OVER fertilize a lawn?" Yes, it's possible. But not what you'd think. The 'typical' overfertilize stripes that we all seem to fear came from the old drop spreaders, when the rows were overlapped. That overlap caused a doubling of the fertilizer along that narrow, overlapped row, and it was all delivered in one day. What most people forget, while imagining the scorn of neighbors and children, is that those bands of over fertilization did not last until fall, they went away in less than a month. Repeat: the so called over fertilization went away, in less than a month. The homeowner had not created another Love Canal toxic zone, the homeowner had instead managed to put down more than the grass could handle all at once, but in fact the lawn handled it, and probably even needed it. The lawn just didn't need it all at once. Nor in summer's heat. Disaster? No. Bad delivery technique? Yes. It wasn't too much fertilizer, it was too much fertilizer all at once, and there's a difference, isn't there? These days, with the rotary far-flinging spreaders, a more evenly spread application of fertilizer is the norm. Now that we want to emulate the sod farms (and their turf success), we know that there's no sin in putting down a half application, in one direction, and putting down the other half application, in the other direction a week later. Now that we want to emulate the sod farms, we will want to feed the lawn during summer, rather than letting it starve while it battles the hot summer sun. So Milorganite, or other organic fertilizer is required, rather than a big-first number fertilizer. At least once in summer, but if you've renovated, or over seeded, that new KBG needs two applications. It needs the food. So there's my recommendation for the renovators and overseeders: two applications in the fall (not the first year, on the seedlings, they can't use the food yet, as they haven't grown enough yet) at least one application in the spring (two if you renovated or overseeded. That application we skipped last fall goes down the following spring), and you must feed the lawn in the summer: that new KBG needs the food. So here we are, end of August. You know you are going to fertilize in the fall, probably twice, and perhaps didn't do enough during spring or summer. You can do a half application right now, of big first number fertilizer, or a full application of Milorganite. And still do the regular fertilizing when fall gets here. But your lawn likely needs the meal, and if you provide that light meal right now, before fall gets here, I think you'll love the visible results. Good luck with it."

OK, back. Organic feedings are slower trickles of nitrogen (and other resources) that feed the lawn gently over time and improve the soil while you're doing it. They also encourage lots of worms (a good thing) and insects that eat the feeding (also a good thing). How much depends. It's hard to overdo it--I couldn't manage and I was slamming the soil--and I generally recommend the same number of feedings you'd do synthetically, just at slightly different times. Organics take a few weeks to work, so you have to anticipate what the grass will want a little more. That's actually very easy. For synthetics like Scott's, my general recommendation is late May, early September, the first of October, and when the grass ceases growth for the season, as long as that's after October 21st (if not, the October feeding is fine). For northeast OH, I'd expect that you'll be performing that last feeding in early November, but the date will vary a lot either way. For organics, early to mid May, mid August to early September, October first, and then winterize with a synthetic when growth stops (organics don't make good winterizers, they're too slow and don't decay in very cold weather fast enough). I use plain old soybean meal on my lawn at 15 pounds per thousand square feet. For you, that'll probably also be a good option. Strength of organics varies--soybean and cottonseed meal are at the top with around 45% protein, or the equivalent of 7% nitrogen. Alfalfa, corn, oats, and so on are much weaker and would require larger amounts to provide an equivalent feeding. That can actually be a good thing--to transform my soil, I used copious cracked corn as it didn't overdo the nitrogen but added a lot of organic matter to the soil. But for feeding, they're inferior. For alfalfa, you also shouldn't exceed 20 pounds per thousand three times a year due to the growth hormones in it, but that's another story.

Wilting is actually not necessarily a demand or request for watering, it's a statement that water is leaving the system faster than it's being absorbed--or that the root systems are not up to supplying water as quickly as the leaf systems are transpiring it. It actually doesn't say anything about the state of moisture in the soil, which can be entirely adequate. Cool-season organisms will typically wilt when out of their temperature comfort ranges rather easily, so grasses would certainly be susceptible. It's not an issue for grass to wilt mid-day in 90-degree weather, any more than it's an issue for most plants to do so. One of my best photos of the garden is in hundred degree weather and the greenery is a bit wilted. The issue would be if the grass remains wilted after sunset when the roots have time to catch up and resupply the blades with water when the blade cools and the biological processing rates slow to something the roots can supply. Furthermore, day-wilting produces hormonal responses that spark root growth as temperatures fall in the soil to where root growth can resume. Constantly supplying water as temperatures cross that point mean that root growth never starts when temperatures are appropriate for said growth. Consistent coddling never produces the deep mat of roots that will support grass (or any plant) against wilting, which means it will continue to wilt in less-harsh weather than more harshly-treated lawns. There's a minor argument for syringing the lawn here, but that's not what we're discussing. That involves a drop of surface leaf temperature due to water contact and evaporative cooling, not a root watering.