1. Drain Your Watering System
Before the first hard freeze in your area, drain your sprinkler or other water management system in accordance with the manufacturer’s directions. While you’re at it, winterize your pool, pond or other water features, shut off the water to exterior faucets and empty your rain barrel and birdbath.
If you’re conflicted about when to make the big fall push, contact your local Cooperative Extension Office for information about the projected first hard frost date for your area. Comprised of a network of regional universities, this USDA sponsored national program helps gardeners, farmers, students and others understand a wide range of science-based public interest topics.
2. Give Your Lawn A Close Shave
If you’ve let your grass grow taller over the summer months to create a lush lawn, now is the time to cut the grass to a height of about two inches. This will help protect your lawn from the stress of big seasonal changes and conserve its important root energy for spring. Shorter stature will also help keep grass blades erect, which improves air flow and helps the lawn withstand the onslaught of fallen leaves and snow.
3. Aerate
Aeration keeps the soil under a lawn loose and viable. Loose soil makes it easier for a lawn’s root system to burrow down deep, protecting it in winter and making underground moisture more accessible in summer. A well aerated lawn has fewer thatch buildup problems, and is better able to deal with bacteria, fungus and pests.
The process is pretty basic. A tool perforates the lawn with a regular network of holes between 2 and 3 inches deep. Aeration that removes plugs, or small round clumps of soil and grass, is widely considered more effective than just poking holes in the lawn using a spike aerator that tends to compact the soil around each depression.
4. Tackle Weeds
You may notice weeds in your lawn every spring, but those invaders actually settle in and make themselves at home during the fall. For the best results, apply a lawn herbicide when daily temperatures are still above 60 degrees. At that temperature, many perennial lawn weed varieties are still actively feeding in preparation for the colder temperatures ahead, so they’re more likely to absorb the targeted poison. The longer you wait, the less effective your efforts are likely to be.
Tip: There are selective and non-selective herbicides on the market, and they have a very different approach to weed control. A selective weed killer will target a specific plant variety, like crabgrass, or a group of plants, like dandelion, chickweed and others. A non-specific herbicide will kill any plant life it encounters. Read the labels carefully before you buy, and choose a selective herbicide product designed to kill weeds in your type of turf grass.
5. Don’t Forget To Water
Even though your lawn isn’t in an active growth phase, it still needs regular watering. It may not require the aggressive watering regimen you gave it back in July, but it will continue to need water until it goes dormant when the persistent temperature reaches around 45 degrees Fahrenheit. Until then, water during dry periods, preferably during the morning hours.
6. Feed For The Future
Cold season grasses like fescue and bluegrass benefit from early and late fall feedings. This will help them store energy that will get them up and growing faster when the days get longer and warmer. If you’ve seen homes with bright green grass impossibly early in spring, that flourishing start was probably thanks to a late fall meal.
9. Lose The Bald And Thinning Spots
Grass usually sees some heavy action over the summer months, especially if you have young children or pets. If that green carpet has a few bald or thinning spots from too much family love, addressing them before your lawn goes into hibernation will reduce the recovery time next spring. A brown winter lawn may look dead, but it’s actually very active at the root level.
Lawn seed you add now will form strong, deep roots over the winter, eliminating bare and brown spots in time for your first barbecue. There are a couple of ways to patch your lawn. The easiest is to purchase a lawn repair kit that contains the three ingredients you’ll need: seed, rapid growth fertilizer and mulch. If you have more than a few small spots, or unique turf, you’ll probably want to purchase the materials separately and take a DIY approach. After application, lawn seed should be kept moist until the seedlings become established. Also, if you have heavy thatch, remove it from the spots you plan to treat, otherwise seeds may sprout in the thatch rather than in the soil.
7. Manage Autumn Leaves
Brightly colored fall leaves may put on a beautiful display every autumn, but most homeowners will agree they look much better on the trees than littering the lawn. A dense layer of fallen leaves can kill patches of lawn, but you might want to think twice before you rake, bag and remove them all. Where a dense mat of leaves can suffocate grass, shredding and mulching those leaves can help provide a lawn with added winter protection.
Use the mulching feature on your mower to shred those leaves and make them work for you. When shredded into small, manageable pieces, fallen leaves become organic top dressing—or free soil conditioner courtesy of your landscape trees. This is one organic solution that’s actually a bargain.
10. Winterize Your Lawnmower
At the end of a long season, prepping your tools for storage may not seem appealing. Come spring, though, a sharp bladed lawnmower and one that starts up without incident will make all those spring chores feel less tedious. Before you move your gardening gear to the back of the garage for the duration:
- Perform general cleaning by removing any dead grass, dirt or debris.
- Run the mower to remove excess gasoline, or disconnect and drain the fuel lines if your fuel hasn’t been treated with a stabilizer (off-season preservative).
- Sharpen the blade or blades.
- Clean or replace the air filter.
- Consider replacing the spark plug.
8. Check For Thatch
Thatch is a dense layer of dead grass material on or just below the soil surface. New, healthy grass can grow up through it, but thatch still causes problems. It can limit air flow, creating a favorable environment for bacterial growth, harbor insects and vermin, and generally make it harder for the lawn to perform simple functions like water management and nutrient uptake. Although less than about a half-inch of thatch is nothing to get too excited about, anything thicker should be removed. Uncontrolled thatch develops if a lawn has experienced drought conditions, compacted soil or inadequate feeding. Cool season grasses should be thatched in the fall.
You can check the edge of your lawn to determine thatch thickness, but you’ll get a more accurate idea by removing a plug or by making four deep vertical slits in the shape of a small and removing a portion of interior turf for inspection.
You can reduce thatch buildup by aerating your lawn, but a thick layer will require treatment with a thatch or power rake designed to dig deep into the turf and extract the matted, dead material. There are also electrical thatch removal tools like vertical mowers on the market that make the job easier.
