Fall Lawn Care Tips

Fall is the perfect time of the year when the grass is absorbing moisture, energy, and nutrients to prepare for the long and harsh winter months. By giving your lawn the attention it needs now, you’ll have a healthy and lush green lawn come spring.

1. Adjust Your Blades

As your lawn needs it, keep on watering and mowing throughout the fall months. As fall comes to a close, lower your blades on your mower to the lowest setting and cut two last times. This will let the sunlight reach the crown of the grass more easily, and there will be less grass leaf to turn brown in the winter.

2. Rake Your Leaves

No one really likes to rake leaves, but it’s necessary for good lawn health. One thing is not to wait until all the leaves have fallen off the trees. This is because the leaves will soak in all the rain and morning dew, causing them to stick together and form a thick mat over your lawn. If it isn’t moved, then your grass will suffocate, and you’ll end up with fungal diseases on your lawn.

3. Aerate Your Lawn

Fall is one of the ideal times to aerate your soil. This will let water, fertilizer, and oxygen reach your grass’s roots. If you don’t want to aerate by hand, you can rent a walk-behind gas-powdered lawn aerator. It’s a self-propelled machine which will punch holes into the dirt and pull out plugs of soil. If you don’t want to do the work yourself, you can always hire a lawn care professional.

4. Filling In The Bald Spots On Your Lawn

Fall is one of the best time to fill in any bare spots you have from hard summer usage. The best way is to do it with an all-in-one lawn repair mixture. This is ready to use combination of grass seed, organic mulch, and quick-start fertilizer. You would rake up the soil to loosen it where the bald spot is at. Then spread the mixture over the area, lightly compact it, water thoroughly and then water every other day for two weeks.

In the fall, you should overseed existing turf to fill in the bare patches and thin spots. Because there’s enough moisture and the sun isn’t radiating summer heat, reseeding is more effective.

Unfortunately, that never happens unless your home is at the seashore where you have plenty of sun, wind and especially salt air to weather the fence. In town, unstained fences only turn a mottled gray and brown, and the pressure-treated posts change colour at a different rate.

Stain is recommended over paint because paint can flake off over time. Cabot has a good line of “semi-solid” stain colors. Semi-solid stain is ideal for most fence and deck stain projects because it absorbs into the wood grain more than semi-transparent, meaning that you don’t have to re-stain as often. At the same time, it is less likely to flake off than solid body stain, which behaves a lot like paint. Normally you need two coats, and you need to apply it only when you’re confident to have four or five days of dry weather after the stain is applied. The good news is that you can now get latex stain, rather than oil-based, which makes it easier to apply and wash up afterwards.

5. Control Your Weeds 

Fall is when weed control is the best time to fight back to control those pesky weeds. Since fall is when weeds are the strongest in absorbing nutrition, adding weed killer to your lawn will be even more effective. If you use an herbicide now, then your weeds won’t return in the spring. According to most herbicide manufacturers, the ideal time is to apply weed killer during early to mid-fall. The daytime temperatures need to be consistently around 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

  6. Fertilize

The roots of grass not only need water to get through the winter, but they also need the plant sugars which help to protect the roots from freezing. Plus, the sugars give the grass the energy to grow in the spring. By applying a late-fall application of 24-0-10 of slow release granular fertilizer, this will help make that happen.

Also, potassium should be added since it aids in disease protection, drought tolerance, root growth and cold resistance. Be careful about spreading the fertilizer near ponds and waterways, since the run-off can contaminate. 

By taking care of your lawn in the fall to prepare it for winter, your yard will be beautiful in the spring.