Scotts Fall Weed and Feed: When to Apply, Settings and Which Bag to Buy

Scotts Makes Two Fall Weed and Feeds and They Are Not the Same

This is where most of the confusion starts. People search for "Scotts fall weed and feed," find one product page, buy whatever the store has, and never realize there are two separate bags with different analyses, different coverage, and slightly different spreader settings. Neither one is the classic 28-0-3 Turf Builder Weed & Feed you have probably used in spring.

Scotts Turf Builder Max Fall Weed & Feed is the 25-0-3 bag. The herbicide load is spelled out on the label: 2,4-D at 1.220 percent and dicamba at 0.081 percent. The 39.5 pound bag covers 14,000 square feet, which makes it the better value if you have real acreage to cover. Scotts also caps it at no more than two applications per year.

Scotts Turf Builder WinterGuard Fall Weed & Feed is the 26-0-2 bag. It uses the same two herbicides, 2,4-D and dicamba, and comes in 4,000 and 12,000 square foot sizes. Scotts labels this one specifically for September through November, which is why it is the bag most people mean when they say "the fall one."

Here is how the whole Scotts weed and feed lineup compares, so you can see exactly which bag you are holding.

The practical difference between the two fall bags is smaller than the marketing suggests. Both are high-nitrogen, zero-phosphorus, low-potassium fertilizers carrying the same broadleaf herbicide pair. Buy on coverage and price, not on which one sounds more seasonal. If you want the classic spring formula walked through step by step, that lives in my full Scotts weed and feed instructions.

When to Apply Scotts Fall Weed and Feed by Region

Fall is not one date. It is a window that opens when summer heat breaks and closes when your weeds stop growing, and that happens six to eight weeks apart depending on where you live. The table below is the version I would tape to the garage wall.

Two cutoffs in that table deserve their own sentence, because Scotts puts them on the label and almost nobody reads that far. Centipedegrass has to be treated before September 1. Bahiagrass has to be treated before November 1. Miss either one and you are outside what the label allows for that grass.

The 60 to 90 degree band is the other rule people break. It is not a comfort guideline, it is a performance one. Below 60 the weeds have slowed down and are not moving much herbicide into their roots. Above 90 you are putting a herbicide and a nitrogen load on a lawn that is already stressed, which is how people end up with streaks. Check the ten-day forecast before you buy, not after you spread.

Spreader Settings for Both Fall Bags

Settings are printed on each bag, but the bag is usually in the store when you are trying to figure out whether your spreader will even work. Here are the numbers for the common Scotts spreaders.

Notice that the two products differ only on the broadcast setting, 3 1/2 versus 3 3/4, and that Scotts does not publish an Elite setting for Max Fall. If you run an Elite and you want a published number, WinterGuard is the bag that has one. If you are using a non-Scotts spreader, find the equivalent setting in your spreader manufacturer's conversion chart rather than guessing, since a half-number error at these rates is a visible difference in the lawn.

How to Apply It Without Wasting the Bag

A weed and feed is not fertilizer. Fertilizer wants to get into the soil as fast as possible. A weed and feed needs the granules to stay on the weed leaves long enough for the 2,4-D and dicamba to be absorbed. Every step below exists to serve that one requirement.

1. Mow two or three days ahead

Mow before you apply, not after, and do not scalp it. You want broadleaf weed foliage present and standing up so the granules have something to land on. Then leave the mower parked for a couple of days after application so you do not rake off the product you just paid for.

2. Apply to a damp lawn

This is the step that separates a bag that works from a bag that does nothing. Spread in the early morning while dew is still on the grass, or lightly water the lawn first. Dry granules bounce off dry leaves and roll to the soil, where they feed the lawn and ignore the weeds entirely.

3. Spread evenly at the labeled setting

Use the setting from the table above for your bag and spreader. Walk a steady pace and overlap your wheel tracks, not your spread pattern, which is the usual cause of green stripes and burned stripes in the same lawn. Close the hopper when you turn at the edges.

4. Do not water for 24 hours

Both fall products want a full day with nothing on the lawn. No irrigation, and ideally no rain in the forecast. Water it in early and you wash the herbicide off the foliage before it has done anything. This one rule is responsible for more disappointed weed and feed reviews than every other mistake combined.

5. Give it two to three weeks

Broadleaf weeds yellow, twist, and curl before they die. That is normal and it is slow. Do not re-treat because nothing happened on day four. Scotts allows no more than two Max Fall applications per year, so a panic re-application costs you the second shot you might actually need.

Can You Use Scotts Weed and Feed in the Fall

Yes, and for cool-season lawns fall is the better window of the two. The question people are usually asking, though, is whether the spring bag sitting in their garage will work in September. It will feed the lawn, but you are better off with one of the two fall-specific products, because the analyses are built for the season and the WinterGuard bag is labeled for September through November explicitly.

The other fall question worth answering: does any of this stop crabgrass next spring? That is a different chemistry and a different bag, and I walked through whether it stops next spring's crabgrass separately, because the answer depends on which product you picked. If you are on a warm-season lawn in the Southeast, the atrazine-based product is a different conversation again and I covered it in the Scotts Southern Weed and Feed guide.

And if you are trying to see how the fall application fits into a full calendar year of applications, that is exactly where fall fits in the 4-step program.

Overseeding and Fall Weed and Feed Do Not Mix

Here is the conflict that ruins more fall lawns than bad timing does. September is the single best month to overseed a cool-season lawn. It is also the single best month to apply a fall weed and feed. You cannot do both in the same week.

Scotts asks for a full month between a Max Fall application and reseeding. The 2,4-D and dicamba that kill broadleaf weeds will also damage grass seedlings, which are botanically just very small plants with no established root system to buffer anything. New seed that comes up into a treated lawn thins out or fails outright.

So pick a lane before Labor Day. If your lawn is thin and you need seed more than you need weed control, overseed first and push the weed and feed to next spring. If your lawn is thick and the problem is dandelion and clover, treat now and put seeding off. I went into more detail on the sequencing and the waiting periods in both directions in my post on overseeding after weed and feed.

If you are genuinely not sure which problem you have, that is worth ten seconds of diagnosis before you spend forty dollars on the wrong bag. A free photo diagnosis will tell you whether you are looking at a weed pressure problem or a thin turf problem, and those two get opposite treatments in September.

Grasses You Must Not Use It On

Scotts prints an unsafe list on the WinterGuard label, and it is short enough to memorize. Do not apply it to creeping bentgrass, St. Augustine, dichondra, carpetgrass, or lippia. Those are not "be careful" entries, they are "expect injury" entries.

St. Augustine is the one that catches people, because it is a common lawn grass across the Gulf Coast and Florida and the bag says nothing about the South on the front. If you have St. Augustine, this product is not for you and the Southern atrazine-based line is where you should be looking instead.

The two date cutoffs belong in this section too, since they function as restrictions rather than suggestions. Centipedegrass gets treated before September 1. Bahiagrass gets treated before November 1. If you are past those dates on those grasses, wait for next year.

And as always, the grass you think you have is not always the grass you have. Bermuda and zoysia get mistaken for each other constantly, and centipede gets mistaken for both. Confirm the species before you open a bag with a date restriction attached to it.

The Bottom Line

Fall weed and feed is one of the highest-return applications of the year on a cool-season lawn, and it is nearly foolproof if you respect four numbers: the 60 to 90 degree band, the 24-hour no-water rule, the one-month gap around seeding, and your own regional window. Pick either fall bag, since the difference between 25-0-3 and 26-0-2 will not be visible in your lawn. Buy on coverage.

What will be visible is timing. A bag applied in mid-September to a damp lawn with the right spreader setting does exactly what the label promises. The same bag applied in late November to a dormant lawn does nothing at all except cost you money, and you will not know which one you did until spring.