Preparing Your Lawn For The Winter Months

When the summer ends and your lawn spraying services, such as through Turfcare Unlimited Lawn Spray Service, isn't necessary anymore, it's time to start thinking about preparing your lawn for the long winter ahead. When the cooler temperatures hit, it's time to get your lawn ready for hibernation and next spring. You may think that your lawn requires less care in the fall, but giving your lawn a little bit of attention now means a better lawn come spring.

Continue to Mow

You should continue to mow and water your lawn as needed throughout the fall season. You can drop the lawn mower's blade to its lowest setting for the last couple of cuttings for the year to allow the sunlight to reach the grass, which can help lessen the chances of the grass turning brown.

Rake the Leaves

Raking the leaves is certainly not a favorite job, but you need to know it's important to start raking them as soon as they start to fall off the trees, not when the last leaf has fallen. The leaves become wet from rain and stick together, and that forms a covering over the lawn that can hurt the grass. Make sure you're keeping up on the raking in order to help your grass continue to thrive. 

Fill in and Fertilize

You should use the fall as a time to fill in any of the bare spots you find in your lawn. There are many repair formulas that you can find at your local garden center, and they usually contain a mixture of mulch, seed, and fertilizer. If you don't have any obvious bare spots that need a bit of attention, be sure to still focus on fertilizing to make sure your lawn will be ready to continue to grow and thrive once spring sets in.    

Control the Weeds

If your lawn is decorated with yellow dots all spring long, you can fight back against those pesky dandelions. Weeds absorb a lot of energy and nutrients during the fall in order to ensure their unwelcome arrival in the springtime. If you plant food, they're eating it; use water, they're drinking it. They'll also absorb weed killer, so have at it. Apply according to manufacturer's instructions, because applying weed killer in the fall is a little bit different than applying it during the summer. However, administering the weed killer now means one less thing to worry about when the growing season starts again.