Spring Lawn Care in the Piedmont

Green-up, first mows, and why patience with the fertilizer pays off.

Quick answer: Warm-season grass (Bermuda, Zoysia, Centipede, St. Augustine) is waking up from dormancy, greening up unevenly through March and April. Don't fertilize it until it's actually green and growing on its own. Tall Fescue is in one of its two active growth windows and can be mowed and fed on a normal schedule. Spring is also pre-emergent herbicide season for anyone dealing with summer weeds like crabgrass.

Two grasses, two different springs

Spring looks completely different depending on what's growing in the yard. Warm-season grass is coming out of a four-to-five month dormant stretch and needs to prove it's actually growing before you feed it. Fescue never went dormant, it just slowed down over winter, and picks back up its normal growth rate as temperatures warm.

Warm-season grass: wait for real green-up

Bermuda, Zoysia, Centipede, and St. Augustine green up unevenly, patches at a time, starting anywhere from mid-March to early May depending on the spring and the specific yard's sun exposure. Fertilizing before the lawn is genuinely green and actively growing does two things: it wastes the fertilizer, since a dormant or barely-waking root system can't use it, and it feeds whatever winter weeds are already up and growing, giving them a head start over the grass. Wait until you've mowed the lawn at least once or twice on its own new growth before applying the first feeding.

First mow of the season is also a good time to clean up: gradually lower the mowing height back down to the grass's normal range (see the grass type guide for specifics) if it was left a little longer over winter, and remove any leftover leaf litter or debris that built up over the dormant months.

Tall Fescue: business as usual, with an eye on summer

Fescue is already green and growing, so spring is a normal mowing and feeding season for it, no waiting required. It's also a reasonable time for a spring fertilizer application, lighter than the fall feeding, since fall is still Fescue's main event. Keep mowing height in its usual range and don't let it get scalped short heading into the hotter months ahead, since a taller blade going into summer shades the soil and root zone better once the heat arrives.

Pre-emergent herbicide: a spring-only window

Pre-emergent herbicides for summer annual weeds like crabgrass work by blocking germination, which means they only work if they're down before the weed seeds actually sprout, typically as soil temperatures sustain around the mid-50s Fahrenheit, often early-to-mid March in the Piedmont, sometimes earlier in a warm year. Applied late, after crabgrass has already germinated, a pre-emergent does close to nothing. If a lawn had a real crabgrass problem last summer, this is the one spring task with an actual deadline attached to it.

Next up

Once warm-season grass is fully green and growing and Fescue has had its spring feeding, the next real work is summer lawn care, peak season for warm-season grass and the hardest stretch of the year for Fescue.