A good fertilization schedule is without a doubt critical to the success of any lawn. There are many recommendations on specific lawn fertilization schedules. Whenever available I have added these schedules to the pages associated with the individual species in question. As a rule, general purpose commercial lawn fertilizers are acceptable for most lawn grasses. One of the rare exceptions to this rule is centipede grass, which is not tolerant of phosphorous (the middle element in fertilizer labels). This is the reason why a fertilizer such as 15-0-15 is recommended for centipede

Fertilizers have labels which show what percentage of each element is available in that particular blend. This is expressed as N-P-K (N for Nitrogen, P for Phosphorous and K for Potash). So a Fertilizer with a label  of 10-6-6 consists of 10% Nitrogen, 6% Phosphorous and 6% Potash. When buying fertilizer for your lawn you should take into consideration local requirements, ideally (although rarely done) I soil test through your local agricultural extension would be ideal.

There is a key factor in fertilizer recommendations which you will find through out this website. It is an expression of how much nitrogen is required on an annual basis per 1000 Sq Ft. It sounds more complicated then it really is. The easiest way to explain this is by example. Suppose you are looking at a fertilizer with a value of 10-10-10. The first element is Nitrogen. If you divide 100 by that number you will get the number of pounds of that fertilizer that you need to apply per 1000 Sq Feet per year to get a value of 1 pound of nitrogen. So if your lawn type requires 2 pounds of nitrogen per year, you would need to apply a total of 20 pounds of fertilizer (using the 10-10-10 example) for the entire year.