Get Your Lawn Ready For Spring

If you're like most of us, you're probably thinking that with fall coming, you shouldn't need to do any more lawn work, so you can sit back and enjoy the fall weather. However, fall is actually the best time to help ensure your lawn comes up green and healthy next spring. Here are some suggestions of ways to have your lawn come through the winter looking good.

The most important thing you can do is keep on maintaining your lawn

• During the fall, your lawn is continuing to grow although perhaps not quite as fast as during the summer, so you need to keep it cut. Gardening experts suggest about 2" is a good length, because if you let it grow much longer than that the grass blades will bend under the weight of snow and ice, providing great places for mice and voles to live and potentially promoting snow mold growth. Keep on cutting your lawn until the snow flies or you don't get any clippings for two weeks. 
• Keep it watered. Since your lawn is still growing, a healthy lawn needs moisture. You may think there's lots of natural moisture, but keep in mind that even though the sun may not be as warm as in the summer it still has heat that will tend to dry your lawn out. Plus the fall winds will also remove moisture from your grass. 
• Don't ignore about all those leaves that have fallen. Autumn leaves look pretty (when they're on the trees), but leaves lying on your lawn will become a wet soggy mess and block sun light from the of grass and moisture from the roots. A layer of leaves left lying on the grass will also preent air movement under the snow and can end up causing snow mold. 
• Usually getting rid of those leaves involves raking, and if you have a large yard that can be a major pain in the back (and other places). A good way to deal with them is to use your lawn mower (without the bag) to chew them into a fine mulch. Mulching your leaves does two things, it obviously gets rid of the leaves but it also provides your lawn with a great source of organic fertilizer. 
• If you think your lawn has a build up of thatch; fall is the best time to remove it. The grass roots system is developed and more resistant to the pulling that occurs during thatch removal. Vigorous raking (with a dethatching rake) will get rid of most of your lawn's thatch, but it's much easier if you rent a power rake or a mechanical dethatcher at your home store. 
• Fall is also a good time to aerate compacted soil. If your lawn gets a lot of foot traffic (or if it hasn't been aerated for few years) the soil will tend to get compacted tightly together, preventing moisture and nutrients from sinking in.   You can usually rent an aerator at a home store and combining aerating with applying grass seed will give you a thick healthy lawn next spring. 
• Finally, fertilize your lawn using a fertilizer formulated specifically for fall application. Experts suggest that fertilizers with a high phosphorous content will promote root growth and give you a strong, healthy lawn next spring. (Fertilizers are always labeled with three numbers in the same order - nitrogen, phosphorous potassium). 

Murray Anderson is an experienced freelance writer over 500 articles published on the web as well as in print magazines and newspapers in both the United States and Canada. He writes on a wide range of topics and is a regular contributor to DoItYourself.com. He can be contacted at murand@lycos.com.