5 Things You Should do to Prepare Your Lawn for Winter

You might feel prepared for winter in Northeast Ohio. You’ve located your ice scraper in your garage and put it in your car. You have saved recipes for holiday parties. You even found your sleds and snowman accessories to amplify winter playtime activities.

What you probably haven’t thought about, though, is your lawn. I mean, it’s going to be covered in snow anyway, so what kind of preparation does it really need, right? 

Actually, that’s wrong. You can do a few key things now to ensure a healthier, happier lawn come springtime. 

Let’s talk about some lawn winter prep tasks that can really help reduce your spring stress and elevate your home lawn for the coming seasons. 

Winter Lawn Preparation 101: 5 Important Tasks To Put On Your To-Do List

Preparing a lawn for winter actually helps get it ready for the coming spring’s growth. And it’s really essential to ensure a healthy grass stand. 

Here are some key elements that make up a good lawn winter prep program. 

1. Take Another Opportunity to Battle Weeds

You really want to take every chance you have to get rid of nasty weeds in your home lawn in Northeast Ohio. And just before winter, you have one more shot to get this done. 

Many different weeds germinate at many different times of year. There are quite a few that germinate in fall, survive the winter, and then actively grow once spring returns. 

Fall weed control helps prepare a lawn for winter by tackling weed seeds that germinate later in the year. If you act now to decrease your weeds, you’ll be happy for these efforts come springtime. 

2. Get that Last Fertilization In

Your kids or your pets let you know when they’re hungry or when you’re out of groceries. But your home lawn’s roots aren’t so talkative. They just sit quietly … but they are actually pretty hungry. 

Fertilizing your lawn in the fall with a slow-release, organic, granular fertilizer prepares a lawn for winter and gives grass roots nutrients to grow deeper. 

3. Remove Things That Can Harm Your Lawn

After the great autumn show that your trees put on, those leaves fall on your lawn. And this is not a nice blanket your lawn would like for winter. In fact, your lawn would prefer quite the opposite: they’d prefer not to be suffocated by wet leaves and pine needles. 

Lawn winter prep includes cleaning up your lawn before snow begins falling. If you leave piles of grass clippings and soggy leaves on your lawn, this could weaken it and cause some wear and tear that you’ll have to address come spring. 

4. Reduce Watering

The cooler temperatures and shorter days that autumn brings means you don’t have to water your lawn as much. 

Remember to adjust your irrigation system as a result as part of your winter lawn preparation. You don’t want to overwater now and encourage lawn disease – not to mention waste water. 

5. Mow a Little Shorter

While you’ve done a good job keeping your lawn at a 3- to 4-inch height all spring and summer long, now it’s time to finally reduce your mowing height a bit to help prevent snow mold and any other damage winter can bring. 

But you still don’t want to mow shorter than 2.5 inches for lawn health reasons. 

Have Questions About Winter Lawn Preparation? Trust Turf Pride

When you and your family are all cozy inside under blankets and near a warm fire watching television during a Northeast Ohio winter, you want to make sure your lawn is tucked in, too. 

By investing in a complete, proactive lawn care program – including lawn winter prep – you can continue to improve and protect your lawn. 

Not sure if your lawn is ready? Give Turf Pride a call. We can create a program for your lawn so that your soil gets the nutrients it needs to create thick, green grass with few to no weeds. Then all you have to do is settle in for winter and enjoy the season knowing your lawn is taken care of. 

Want to improve your lawn’s health and create a thicker, greener lawn? Turf Pride can help. Get started today with a free quote. Together, we’ll customize a plan that gives you the most attractive lawn on the block.