Fall Lawn Care
I wish I had indulged my yard in a little tender-loving fall lawn care. Today
I’m looking out my window at an all-too familiar Midwestern winter. Snow for
Christmas and then a few days of warmth melted the insulating blanket away,
leaving my lawn bare and susceptible to the terrors of an after-thaw ice storm.
It’s easy in the warm spring to roll up our sleeves and get out the rakes,
aerators, spreaders and mowers. After all, we can celebrate putting away the
snow shovels and snow blower! However, although spring lawn care is important, a
good fall lawn care program ensures that we’ll have a lawn to tend when spring
rolls around!
I could have started my fall lawn care with a final mowing. However, the grass
seemed to quit growing… so I quit mowing. Silly me! A final mowing, lowering my
mower blade about ½ inch would have helped me to easily implement the rest of my
plan and prepared my lawn to face the perils of winter.
Before I knew it, my fall lawn care plan got soaked and blew away during a
windy-rainy autumn. Top-dressing my lawn would have been a pain. The grass was
too long for even finely ground compost to reach the soil and I just couldn’t
see myself shivering in the chilly autumn as I used the flat side of my garden
rake to spread an eighth inch of it over my wet yard.
Our red maple, beautiful in autumn, is the last on our block to drop its leaves,
so, I waited to rake. In the meantime, all the neighbors’ leaves covered my lawn
and wouldn’t you know it? By the time the maple was bare, autumn rains were
constant and cold. Fall lawn care was the last thing on my mind! Those
half-decayed leaves are going to be a mess to clean up next spring, in addition
to blocking out the first warm rays of sunshine and impeding the warm spring
rains that my grass would certainly have enjoyed!
So, this year our turf has to “weather the weather” and I’ll spend my winter
wondering if it will maintain the energy to raise it’s blades to the sun after
it pokes through that wet mess of leaves. However, I’ve got a sneaking suspicion
that I’ll be staring at brown patches until summer due to my abandoned fall lawn
care plan.
Good thing it’s a new year! I resolve to implement my fall lawn care plan next
fall.
- Cut my lawn one last time when I notice it’s stopped growing
- Top-dress my
grass with a thin layer of compost, not to keep it warm (I’m not that silly!),
but to add one last batch of nutrients to the soil.
- Spade compost into bare spots and reseed them to give them a head start on
spring growth.
- Rake autumn leaves to maximize my grass’s chance at getting its share of
warm spring rains and sunshine.
Selected Links
Greenshoes: Lawn and Garden Supplies
For more information about other services and products choose from one of the following links:
|
