What do I need to do to get my lawn ready for winter?

Fall is a good time to begin preparing your lawn for the long winter months ahead. You want to be sure that when spring rolls around you have a lush green lawn to enjoy all summer long. There are a variety of services that can get your lawn looking beautiful and I will go through some of them with you now. If you are beginning with a well established lawn you may be interested in Fall clean up and dethatching this is cleaning out all the debris from your lawn. This debris usually consists of dead leaves, sticks, and brush. Removing this debris is called dethatching and it helps keep unwanted pests from nesting in the debris. This will help to keep your grass from dying under the thatch.

If you are working with a blank slate and are trying to decide to seed or sod the first thing you want to consider is that the best time to lay seed is  between late April through May and late August through September. If you are going to lay sod you have a bit more flexibility as you can lay sod through out most of the growing season. So in most cases fall can be a very good time to get your lawn started. Sod can give you a beautiful lawn in a very short amount of time but it is not suitable to every location and with sod you have a limited number of grass species. Seed is more affordable but can be time consuming and can not be planted in certain locations like steep hills where it could be washed away.

Lastly if you are looking for ways to rejuvenate your existing lawn you may want to consider slit seeding. Slit seeding involves using a machine to create shallow pockets in the turf, in which the seeds will be placed. The slit seeding process produces excellent seed to soil contact. Hydroseeding may also be beneficial if you want to cover large areas fast and affordably. Hydroseeding is when your lawn is sprayed with a mixture of grass seed, fertilizer, and mulch. You will have a green covering on your lawn for a week or two until your grass begins to grow. Hydroseeding takes less time to grow then conventional seed and is an affordable alternative to sod. What you do to your lawn now will determine what your lawn will look like this spring.