Fall Lawn Care Tips to Protect Your Grass

Your lawn has served you well all summer. How do you make sure your fall lawn care protects your grass for a beautiful lawn in the spring? Here’s how you know your lawn needs some fall lawn care to make it come back strong next year:

Your lawn is looking dry after a long, hot summer
Your lawn has thin patches or bare soil showing
Your grass is being pushed out by weeds

Even if you’ve taken great care of your lawn for many years, sometimes your grass needs a boost of nutrition or some extra care in the fall to make sure it weathers the winter for another great spring.

How To Care For Your Lawn in Fall To Protect Your Grass

Your lawn will weather the winter better if you consider the following services. Fertilizer or grub control in the spring and summer to prep for fall

Keep cutting until the first hard frost (October – November)
Fertilizer with broadleaf control (August – October)
Removal of fall leaves (September – October)
Aeration once per year (September – October)
Overseed the lawn (September – October)
Removal of leaves and debris from lawns and flowerbeds (September – October)
Turf winterization fertilization (October – November)
Mulching and winterizing flowerbeds and walkways (October – November)

Think your lawn needs a little extra care this year to keep up with a lush appearance next year? Here’s how to best care for it.

The Best Fall Treatments to Protect Grass Over the Winter

There are convenient options to help protect your grass this fall. Fertilizer is where it starts to keep your lawn healthy, with regular applications at the right times to support your grass growing, and weed control as needed to keep your lawn looking thick and healthy.

If you have thin patches, you might need help removing grubs under the lawn, or have your lawn aerated to prevent soil compaction or a thick mat of roots from preventing a healthy lawn from growing back. Especially if you see thin grass in areas where your lawn receives a lot of heavy traffic, you might need aeration to ensure your grass grows back thick next year. This is important to do in the fall to allow grass to grow rather than weeds, which benefit more from aeration if you leave it off until spring.

Keep cutting your lawn until the first hard frost, because it will keep growing! Make sure you’re not letting it get too long, which can make grass vulnerable to fungi, but don’t cut it too short either, or you’ll damage the grass’s ability to put down strong roots. Two and a half to three inches is just right. If your lawn is getting less than one inch of rain per week, keep watering through the fall until the frost, then disconnect any hoses and flush the irrigation system to prevent frozen pipes and spigots.

Make sure that your lawn doesn’t have leaves or debris sitting on it in the fall, as this can choke out grass that may not return in the spring. Rake or remove leaves and debris promptly during the fall. You may need to do this several times if you have a lot of trees dropping leaves throughout the fall on your lawn. If you keep mowing through the fall, you’ll have an easier time chopping up the leaves and keeping them off the grass without as much raking.

Still looking thin? You might want to overseed the lawn in fall and keep the soil damp until new grass germinates so it will come back thicker in spring. Don’t do this too late in fall or too early in spring, or the seeds or new growth could be damaged by frost.

Finally, you’ll want a turf winterization round of fertilizer applied to your lawn late in the fall, in October or November. Giving your lawn the nutrition it needs in the fall will help it grow back healthy and strong in the spring.

Questions To Ask When Choosing a Lawncare Service

Want someone to do the work for you? Ever So Green offers full lawn care services, even throughout the late fall. Here are some questions you could ask when hiring a lawn care service to make sure they’re right for you:

How often do you mow or remove leaves and debris from my lawn?
Do you blow debris off walkways and neaten or mulch flowerbeds?
How often would you recommend fertilizing my lawn?
What other services does my lawn need to look its best?
Do you winterize irrigation systems?
Do you offer other services like snow removal during the winter?
If I have a special need like debris in the yard, can I call you for removal?

We can’t wait to see your lawn through fall and into next spring to make sure it looks its healthiest. Give Ever So Green a call for a free consultation on your lawncare needs at 517-540-1100. We serve Livingston County, Michigan.