How to Use fertilize in a Sentence

fertilize

verb
  • The soil is so rich there is no need to fertilize.
  • He fertilizes the lawn every year.
  • A single sperm fertilizes an egg.
  • Bees fertilize plants as they collect nectar from flowers.
  • When is the best time to fertilize the plants and what to use?
    Tom MacCubbin, orlandosentinel.com, 23 Nov. 2019
  • The male fish will then wrap around the female to fertilize the eggs.
    Daily Pilot Staff, latimes.com, 13 June 2019
  • Of course renters also don’t have to fertilize the lawn, trim the trees and rake up all the leaves.
    Karen D'souza, The Mercury News, 3 July 2019
  • In the spring over-seed any weak spots and fertilize again.
    oregonlive, 6 Sep. 2020
  • Once established, fertilize your plants in the fall and again in the spring as the shoots come out of the ground.
    Arricca Elin Sansone, House Beautiful, 18 June 2020
  • The female then lays her eggs in the gravel and the male fertilizes them.
    Tom Stienstra, SFChronicle.com, 10 Dec. 2019
  • The pollen lands on the plants’ strands of silk, which swing like dirty blond ponytails, and slides down the strands to fertilize the ears.
    Helen Rosner, The New Yorker, 20 June 2019
  • If those eggs can be fertilized with the once-frozen sperm, the species could have a future.
    Andrea Foa, Los Angeles Times, 27 Aug. 2019
  • The log would be burned for 12 days, and ashes saved to fertilize spring crops.
    Mary Whitfill Roeloffs, Forbes, 18 Dec. 2024
  • The fish beach themselves to lay, fertilize and bury eggs.
    Brian Handwerk, Smithsonian Magazine, 25 Oct. 2024
  • Milt flows down the female’s body to fertilize the eggs.
    Los Angeles Times, 9 June 2022
  • The urine will be collected and used to fertilize green spaces in the city.
    Manasee Wagh, Popular Mechanics, 5 May 2022
  • Here, the idea is to fertilize the egg outside of the body and then put the resulting embryo back in.
    Brooke Borel, New York Times, 17 Apr. 2020
  • Right at the top of the list of questions is whether to fertilize houseplants during the winter.
    Jeff Lowenfels | Alaska Gardening and Growing, Anchorage Daily News, 3 Nov. 2022
  • The process depends on touch and time -- the touch for getting the eggs out of a female, and less than a minute to use the male trout to fertilize the eggs.
    CBS News, 19 June 2018
  • The female deposits eggs on the ceiling, and the male fertilizes them.
    National Geographic, 6 Feb. 2020
  • There is no need to fertilize a lawn unless you are so brainwashed by the ads.
    Jeff Lowenfels, Anchorage Daily News, 7 June 2018
  • This allows the grass to fertilize in the winter, thus boosting growth in the spring and summer.
    Melissa Nott, chicagotribune.com, 28 Mar. 2021
  • Or worse, we will be told to go out and fertilize and kill dandelions at the same time.
    Jeff Lowenfels, Anchorage Daily News, 31 Mar. 2022
  • Astronauts crushed the testes and used the sperm to fertilize eggs obtained from the female frogs.
    Anne Fadiman, Harper’s Magazine , 10 Feb. 2023
  • Those eggs were then fertilized with sperm and led to healthy baby mice.
    TIME, 2 May 2024
  • Place it in indirect to low light and fertilize it once or twice a year.
    Christian Gollayan, Men's Health, 7 June 2022
  • The most massive trees are found near the riverbanks, fertilized by dead salmon.
    Alex Robinson, Outdoor Life, 16 Jan. 2020
  • If the foliage begins to lose its rich green color and the plants bloom less, that's when to fertilize.
    Dan Gill, NOLA.com, 18 Nov. 2020
  • The fish waste is used as nutrients to fertilize the plants, which filter the water to be reused in the fish tank.
    Karina Elwood, Washington Post, 2 Apr. 2023
  • The fish are then brought into the facility, where eggs and milt are collected and the eggs are fertilized.
    Tanya Wildt, Detroit Free Press, 19 Dec. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'fertilize.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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