What a strange year this has been, especially in the lawn care world! So this fall (late fall really) it will be very important that you take the right steps to ensure your turf grass is safe over winter and comes out healthy and green next spring.
Now, I’m not attempting to “get all extreme” on you or anything. If you don’t follow these simple tips, your lawn will be fine next year… but if you can makes things better, faster… you should! These tips will do just that… improve your lawn faster next spring.
Late Fall Lawn Tips
Mowing Shorter On The Last Cut
This is one of the most common questions I get in the fall, “Should I mow my lawn shorter before winter?” …and the answer is yes! here’s why:
I typically want you to cut the lawn tall. But before winter, I want you to go 1/3 lower. So if you cut at 3″ during the summer, you should drop your blade and make the very lat cut of the season at 2 inches.
The reason we cut lower just before winter it to reduce the chances of snow mold showing up. You see, we DO want a nice snow covering over the winter. If the lawn is blanketed in snow, this protects it from transpiration. Transpiration happens when dry and cold winter winds whip across the grass plants and pull out any moisture residing in the blades. It too much is pulled out, those areas die! A nice snow pack on top keeps this from happening and a shorter cut means you don’t need as much snow to fall!
In addition, shorter grass blades will not lay over from the weight of this snow pack. Long grass blades under snow will compact down and snow mold will occur. That is not what we want.
Fall Fertilizer
Right after you cut for the last time, I recommend you apply a nice balanced fertilizer to the lawn. This fert will do nothing this season, but will be there for next spring when we get warmed up. Your lawn will utilize these nutrients immediately to start off the season right.
Use something that has some nitrogen in it. This will cause some nice growth early in the spring and that is what we want.
