YardWorks Spreader Settings Guide

YardWorks is one of the biggest domestic spreader manufacturing companies in the United States. Their product line primarily consists of manual broadcast and drop spreaders, ideal for lawn dressing in the home.

At the same time, some contract lawn top-dressers are also fond of their tools due to their durability and assurance. While it may be easy for contract lawn top-dressers to work with the right spreader settings because they’re quite experienced with many products, the story changes when it comes to homeowners who do their top-dressing themselves.

There are many cases where first-timers or amateur top-dressers try to spread a product with the wrong settings and end up using more than they should; sometimes, it gets even worse when their spread isn’t enough, thus affecting the effectiveness of the spreading.

To avoid this scenario for all first-timers using Yardworks spreaders, we’ve outlined standard spreader settings for a plethora of lawn dressing products. These settings below will cover spreader settings extensively for all types of topdressing and soil banding products you’ll ever need for your lawn.

Yardworks Spreader Settings

For this article, we will focus on Yardworks’ bestselling broadcast and heavy-duty drop spreader, the Yardworks 85LB Broadcast Spreader (Model BS0001-85), and the SKU#264-1227 Heavy-duty Drop Spreader (Model CT0085-75). 

Yardworks design their spreaders such that the spreader settings are compatible with both types of spreaders. While that’s the case, if you’ve got another broadcast or drop spreader by Yardworks, you can also use the same settings because that aspect doesn’t get a lot of changes even on different models. At any rate, we will give a simple strategy for getting a proper spreader setting for users working with other spreader models.

How to Determine Your Spreader Setting without a Setting Chart or Table

While most lawn topdressing products will come with spreader settings compatible with many popular lawn spreaders, others will often need your intuition to get the right spreader settings for your application. Also, people with less common spreaders are affected because settings for their particular spreader may not be included with others written on the bag or pack of the product.

As said earlier, getting the proper spreader setting in these cases will require some intuition, and also, a level of trust in your abilities. You want to go slowly while using a testing ground that’s no more than ¼ of the entire yard, and of course not your results during testing.

You can follow the steps below:

Step #1 

Add a weighed portion of the material you’re spreading to the hopper. This weighed portion should ideally follow the recommended quantity used with other spreaders per 1000 sq. ft. If the available manual has a random lbs/1000sq.ft. depending on the spreader, you will need to work with the average, rounding up to the nearest 0.5lbs.

Step #2

Set the spreader to no more than ¼ of its entire setting range, and proceed to test. Focus on the coverage and application rate; allowing you to determine the correct lbs/1000 sq. ft. and the proper setting. You can get the correct lbs/1000 sq. ft. when you measure the leftover material in the hopper, and in cases when you come up short, decrease the settings before spreading the remaining part of the lawn.

Ideally, you want to start small if you’re spreading fertilizers; it’s better to under-fertilize because over-fertilization can damage the lawn. However, if you’re applying a soil treatment or insecticide, you go in larger quantities.