Five Expert Tips To Winterize Your Lawn

Have you noticed the temperature dropping at night? Morning dew on your windows and car? It's that time of year again! Autumn is approaching, and that means it's time to start preparing your lawn for the winter and the spring bloom. To get the brightest and most lush lawn you can, one can't just begin and end with raking leaves and mowing one last time in September. Let us at Norby's Farm Fleet help you maintain the best lawn!

First, you should determine what type of grass you have planted in your lawn. There are cold weather and warm weather grass types, which have different standards of when they need fertilization. You most likely have cold weather grass, given the area of the country we live in!

For cold weather grass types, fertilization of the lawn should happen in the Autumn. This time of year is when the roots and the “rhizomes”—the underground plant stems that the grass leaves grow out of—are growing at their fastest and retaining the most nutrients, even as the leaves die out. You should notice a much thicker, brighter growth of grass in the spring if you fertilize in the Autumn. At Norby's we have plenty of fertilizers to pick from, including a product from Scotts specifically for Fall Fertilization! Ask one of our associates for help finding this product when you stop in.

Second, make sure you keep mowing your grass and raking your yard as much as possible. Those rhizomes require sunlight to absorb as much nutrient as they can, and long grass or heavy leaf cover impedes on those rhizomes getting all of the sunlight they can. When you are getting to your final mowings for the year, drop your mower's settings to the lowest possible to give the grass a chance to absorb the last of the abundant sunlight for the season.

Third, you should apply at least one more treatment of weed killer on your lawn before the end of the season. Just like grass, weeds absorb the most amount of nutrients during this time of year. This includes weed killers that we carry from brands such as Scotts, RoundUp, Bonide, and more. If you do this, you should see significantly fewer weeds popping up in the spring.

Fourth, you should repair the “bald spots” in your lawn this time of year, much for reasons mentioned above about the roots and rhizomes still growing rapidly during this time. We feature brands of grass seed such as Lifetyme, Xseed, and more.

Fifth, if you have had a particularly wet or dry spring and summer, you should aerate your soil. If you don't, thatch can form and choke the roots of your lawn, causing the grass to die in patches. You need an aerator for this task, which you can rent from local hardware stores.

Stop in to your local Norby's location today and get started on your winterizing lawn preparation!