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Just like the rest of your garden, your lawn will need some extra care provided before it falls into its long awaited winter’s sleep. Like a bear preparing for its hibernation, there are some things you need to do to ensure that your lawn reawakes in the spring on its best foot, ready to reward you with superb growth right off the starting line on those first few days that winter breaks.
Continue to cut your grass down to between two and three inches until you notice two full weeks of no new growth. Shorter length than this range and your grass will be exposed to drying winter winds and too much sun, killing it with winter burn and lack of moisture from frozen and unavailable water. If your grass is longer than around three inches when winter arrives, you’ll be left with grass that overlaps on itself, trapping moisture that will harbor fungus and snow mold. Yes, even in winter you grass needs to be able to breathe, receive light and air.
Use the fall season to aerate your lawn, especially in areas of high compaction caused by consistent foot traffic or other types of traffic. You can do this with a mechanical aerator attachment available for most lawn tractors, or a push behind model. You can also do it by hand with a corer hand tool. This loosens up hardened areas, allowing the roots and tillers to fill in the compacted areas as they grow during the winter months. It’s true, growth underground is happening while the growth on the top has stalled until the weather warms. This brings me to my next suggestion for preparing your lawn to hibernate for the winter.
Edge your garden beds and sidewalks at this time. You’ll get a head start on spring planting season, making sure that any grass that enters your beds doesn’t become weeds.
Fall is also the best time to give your lawn that one last good dose of fertilizer that will also stimulate those roots to fill in during their winter dormancy. Choose a fully comprehensive, good quality lawn fertilizer with high nitrogen content to promote basic growth in your grass, or even spring for a special winterizing blend. Also, since the weather in the fall tends to be cooler and wetter, you won’t have to worry about fertilizer burn in case you apply too much in one place.
The fall is also the best time to lay new seed. If you’re patching up rough spots in your existing lawn, or growing new turf from scratch, the weather during the early to mid-fall season is perfect for new grass seedlings to take root and get just enough growth in before winter dormancy sets. You can wait until spring, but potential upswings in temperatures and heavy rains can ruin tender seed patches. People who sow their grass seed in the fall tend to have the best results.
Keep your lawn free of too much leaf debris and other litter. This will dampen the grass, creating holding spots for diseases and fungi to populate. You can do this by either mulching your leaves into smaller pieces with a lawn mower, or taking them time to rake or blow them completely off of your lawn.
One last thing you can do that will indirectly benefit your lawn over the winter and into spring is taking your lawn care equipment in to get serviced, or tuning it up yourself. This includes cleaning of your machines, sharpening or replacing blades, and replacing any old and worn out equipment in preparation for next year.
Part of keeping a lovely landscape and garden is keeping your lawn in peak condition. Taking these steps to improve your lawn in the fall and winterizing your turf will greatly reward you in the spring with not only less work, but also a fast start to a much healthier and happier lawn.
It is not easy to have a lawn this nice, but it sure isn’t impossible either!