Wise To Winter - Winterizing Your Lawn

Taking care of your lawn throughout all of the seasons is especially important. Because of this, preparing your lawn for the winter season, or winterizing your lawn is one of the parts of maintenance to be performed. Your lawn does not die in the winter time, but rather, becomes dormant for one season because of the cold. If it gets colder in your area at this time, and if it is likely that snow will cover your lawn, then it is important to winterize your lawn to prevent problems which may occur the next spring.

Before preparing everything for the winter, make sure that your lawn is healthy. It is important to not stop mowing the lawn too soon or to stop watering the grass before the season is over. By doing this, the lawn will not be able to take in the last of the nutrients before the ground freezes.

When the right time comes, the first thing which should be done is to rake all of the leaves and debris that is on your lawn. By doing this, you will be allowing the nutrients and sunlight to continue to move into your lawn through the winter season. Bad soils that are in your lawn at the time will also be removed, causing only the healthy soil to remain in place and balancing out the pH contents. Raking also helps cause better aeration to occur throughout your lawn, which will help your grass to become greener when spring time comes back around. You will also prevent diseases from occurring from molds that may form as a result of the ice and snow moving into the soil and molding. The wet from the snow will often find debris or leaves to hold onto in order to mold.

The fall season is also a good time to apply weed control to your lawn. This will cause the weeds that were growing in your lawn before to not be able to come back the next year. This is especially good for the broadleaf weeds that were trying to grow in your lawn for the season. Eliminating weeds at all times will help prevent further weeds from growing. Unlike grass, weeds continue to grow throughout the year, making it harder to eliminate them when the spring comes.

The third thing that should be done in order to prepare for the winter seasons is adding compost or fertilizer that will help your lawn throughout the winter seasons. Because grass becomes dormant, instead of dying, it is important to make sure that there are extra fertilizers that can be stored throughout the winter. This will help especially if there is ice or snow that will cover the ground, as the grass will have extra stored resources to help move through the winter season. This also helps the grass recover from the heat of the sun from the summer and will prepare them for the same thing next year.

It is always important to check on the soil and the amount of pH balance that is contained at that time. Because of the shift in nutrients and soil during the summer seasons, the pH balance can easily change. You may need to reduce the acidity or re-balance it through the use of different fertilizers. By doing this before the winter season, it will give the fertilizer time to soak into the soil; making it more balanced by the time the spring season arrives for a re-growth in your lawn.

Another thing to do in winterizing different parts of lawn care is to make sure that your lawn mower is ready to be stored away. In order to keep the mower running like new, it is important to make sure it is taken care of during the winter season as well. It's important to remove all of the gas and oil that is left in the mower. If you don't do this, the oil and gas will become old and will not be useful in the spring. It may become too thick to be able to allow the lawn mower to run.

By preparing your lawn and lawn care maintenance tools for winter, it will make it easier to take care of in the spring. It will also help your lawn to stay healthy, even though it is a dormant season of the year. Winterizing your lawn is a way to allow a better and healthier lawn to come back at the beginning of the next year.