Coated chemical fertilizers like Osmocote, and Nutricote, the control for release of the fertilizer is temperature. At 70 F they will release fertilizer over a 3 month period (check label on bag, there are several different formulation)
The same Osmocote that is a 3 month at 70 will be a 2 month at 80 F and 4 month at 60 F, and release almost nothing at 40 F. Generally, for northern growers this is good, and can be taken advantage of. Plants need more nutrients when it is warm, less when cool and growth is slower. If you are in an area with more than 14 days a year above 90 F, coated chemical fertilizers can bite you in the rear. At high temperatures many trees go into a summer dormancy, and slow their metabolism, It is in these high temps that the coated fertilizers will dump out their contents the quickest. Not a good mix. You can get fertilizer burn at high temps. If you use these, and they are useful, you must plan for them to do their release at high temps.
And I got in trouble once. Put some on in spring, and the target tree was still looking "chlorotic", looking starved. Well, it was a cool spring. Without thinking I gave the tree a double dose, still no response, ended up at triple dose. Then our weather suddenly broke. We went from 50's and 60's to 80's and 90's in a short time. Bang, the tree went from looking starved, to suddenly green to suddenly "burnt" in the coarse of a couple weeks. Had to repot the tree to get all the fertilizer pellets out of the mix. It sat the rest of the summer without fertilizer. recovered some, and this spring it is finally looking quite healthy again.
So don't overdose pelletized control release fertilizer. especially early in the cooler part of the growing season. On the other hand, I now use water soluble fertilizer, but supplement the heavy feeders I want to bulk up with the coated fertilizer, and I keep a tag with dates in each tree, so I know not to dose again. Great stuff for heavy feeders, growing out stuff rapidly, pretty tricky to use for more refined trees.