Winterizing Landscape For Fall

• After harvesting your fruits and flowers, remove old plant matter from the garden, placing it in your compost bin. Leaving it behind in the garden would invite plant diseases next growing season.
• Rototill your garden soil. Rototilling now may seem premature; but it will make your spring rototilling work go much easier. Make a habit of rototilling each year both in the fall and in the spring. Drain the old gas out of the rototiller afterwards.
• If you are going to rototill, this is the time to apply lime (if soil tests have indicated that your pH is too low). The effects of liming don’t manifest themselves for several months, so liming in the spring is too late for next year’s crop.

 

Adjusting lawn mower height for fall mowing is not an issue with cool season grasses. Just set the height as you normally would, right up until the time when growth stops and you stop mowing. But an adjustment should be made to lawn mower height in the fall for warm season turf grasses: increase the height by 1/2 inch.

So at exactly what height should you set lawn mowers, in general? According to some professionals or lawn care services, mowing your lawn with a lawn mower set at a proper height can save you from having to rake or bag your lawn clippings. His rule of thumb is, “Mow when your grass is dry and 3 to 3-1/2 inches tall. Never cut it shorter then [sic] 2 to 2-1/2 inches or remove more than one third of the leaf surface at any one mowing.”

Your premises  is that the valuable nutrients in the grass clippings can do your lawn some good, left right where they lie after mowing — as long as their bulk is kept at a minimum. By following his rule of thumb and cutting only about an inch off the top of your grass at any one time, the bulk of the grass clippings is kept low.

Employing experts lawn care tip will entail more frequent mowing, to be sure. But the result will be a healthier lawn, fed by nutrients that you would otherwise be hauling away. Think of it this way: with this approach, you’re essentially mowing and fertilizing at the same time. Taking care of two lawn maintenance tasks at once — that’s for me!

Some useful lawn equipment to perform this task is the mulching lawn mower. With mulching lawn mowers, you don’t need to be quite so careful about the height at which you cut your grass, since the clippings are shredded up more finely. This works much better for those of us who don’t generally walk around with tape measures on our belts!

Fall lawn care for cool season grasses entails ensuring that lawns receive enough fall water to carry them through the long winter. Don’t think that because the temperatures outside are no longer high, you can forget about watering in the autumn. Another fall lawn care tip that applies specifically to the maintenance of cool season grasses is fertilization. Apply 1 pound of nitrogen per 1,000 square feet of lawn. Or purchase a product that has a low middle number forNPK; for example, Scotts’ “WinterGuard” Turf Builder has an NPK of 32-0-10.

Conversely, avoid fertilizing a warm season turf grass in the autumn. The latter undergoes a hardening-off process during this time of year to prepare it for winter. Fertilizing warm season grasses in the fall may interfere with that hardening-off process.

So what fall lawn care tasks should you be performing for warm season grasses? By overseeding with annual winter ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum), homeowners whose lawns are composed of warm season grasses can enjoy a green carpet during the winter, instead of having to look at a brown lawn. But when you buy the seed, be sure to ask for the annual, not the perennial. Annual winter ryegrass will die back when summer’s heat returns, turning over the lawn once again to the warm season grasses. This exit is a timely one. The problem with the perennial winter ryegrass is that it doesn’t go away, competing with your warm season grasses for sunlight, water and nutrients.

Lawns composed of cool season grasses can also profit from overseeding. But in this case, the motivation behind overseeding lawns is not winter cosmetics, but to fix bare patches — with an eye to next year’s lawn.

PROTECTING YOUR EVERGREENS

There are a couple things you can do. First off, you can cover all the evergreen with burlap to protect them. But folks, that  looks funky!

The other side of the gardening & landscaping coin involves the anchors: the evergreens.  all landscapes have evergreens amongst the other plants to provide some substance in the coursework of the winter (because evergreen stay green in the winter ya know!) The issue to think about here (especially in the Windy City) is that cold winds can dehydrate them, dry them out & kill em’! Have you ever noticed your evergreens looking brown after the long winter? That’s because the wind dried them out!

The better process to keep your evergreens from dehydrating is to spray your plants with an anti-desiccant, making a waxy coating on the leaves & needles to seal in the moisture. These sprays work great while they’re on, but you’ll want to re-apply them again in January when the coldest winds sweep across the Midwest.

To a great degree winterizing trees and larger shrubs can be achieved simply by watering them properly in the fall, since the winter damage that they sustain often stems from their inability to draw water from the frozen earth. “Avoid watering trees in late summer or early fall before the leaves fall so they can ‘harden off’ for winter. “Then in late fall, after deciduous trees drop their leaves but before the ground freezes, give both evergreen and deciduous trees and shrubs a final deep watering to last them through the winter.” The same source also reminds us to “water under the entire canopy area and beyond,” to cover the entire root area.

Step 1: Mower heightA nice solid lawn in spring gets its start in the fall; this is why a fall lawn care plan is crucial to success. These tips will have you cutting your work in the spring down and getting a better return of the plush green lawn you’ve worked so hard on!You will require to raise up your mower so when you are cutting you only cut about the top 1/3rd of the grass blades. This will help keep the ground shaded and that means you can reduce how often you water the lawn. You require to have a pleasant, warm blanket on the lawn for the winter, so shade and length are six things to look for.Step 2: Using less waterWith the cooler months and slower growth you can cut back on how often you water your lawn.Step 3: Mowing lessSteps 4 & 5: Fertilizer and re-seeding

This goes hand in hand with less water. Cooler weather means less water and less mowing!

Step 6: Insects

These six  go together; you require to apply both to areas that are dead, sunburnt or weaker than the remainder of the lawn. usually you require to apply fertilizer in the early fall/late summer. Then again in the late fall you will require to apply a dormant fertilizer which will slowly release nitrogen over the winter months.

Insects serve a purpose but not when we are damaging your lawn! Keeping track of them and addressing areas that are damaged is an important part of your fall lawn care plan.

Step 7: Aerating

Step 8: Winterizing

Your lawn will get compacted as time goes by both naturally and as you use it, so when your soil gets  compacted, you will need to aerate. This will help the water and fertilizer reach the roots.

this easy 8-step fall lawn care plan will have you prepared for the approaching winter months and have your lawn prepared for the spring.

You will require to winterize all your equipment, mowers, trimmers, as well as your hand tools and ensure everything is properly sharpened. Also, you will require to winterize your irrigation system, if you have one, as well as draining and storing any hoses.

If 8 steps appear like  plenty of, I’d advise you to focus on fertilizing first and foremost. We offer a Winter Fertilizer Blend that you can apply in late fall to winterize your lawn safely and naturally. It helps make certain that your lawn has the minerals it needs to hibernate properly. you can add our Soil Booster Seaweed Fertilizer in early spring to reactivate the micro-organisms in the lawn.