Getting Your Lawn Ready for Spring

Just like you give your home a spring cleaning, your yard needs the same attention. Picking up winter debris, like broken tree limbs, and gathering up matted leaves and grass allow better application of fertilizer and grass seed and make your yard safer for mowing. It’s preferable to use a leaf rake, as a metal-tine garden rake will be too rough for your grass and roots. Using a leaf blower is also good to move larger piles of leaves and clean up your lawn with ease.

A lawn needs three main ingredients to maintain its health: air, water and nutrition. Aeration creates a pathway for all three to get into your soil by making small holes into the turf. If your soil is compacted due to heavy traffic, children’s play areas or a heavy clay composition, then aeration is a necessity for your lawn to thrive.

For southern lawns with warm-season grasses, like zoysia, Bermuda grass and St. Augustine, a late spring or early summer aeration is suggested. Northern lawns that have cool-season grasses, like Kentucky bluegrass, tall fescue and ryegrass, do better with an early fall or early spring treatment schedule.

There are three main types of aerators: 

• Plug or core, which pulls a plug of soil out and then drops it on the ground to decompose back into the turf. This is the primary method lawn-care pros use to aerate the soil.
  
• Slicing, which, like its name suggests, makes small slits or slices into your lawn to enable air, water and nutrients to get into the soil.
• Spiking, where small holes are poked into the soil to open it up for air, water and nutrients.

After opening your lawn up for air and water, it’s time to begin feeding it with fertilizer and a preemergent to help control any crabgrass that may be lurking. After about six to eight weeks, you can apply a broad-leaf herbicide to control weeds like dandelions, chickweed and wild clover. If your weed problem isn’t too great, you can get rid of weeds simply by pulling them out of the ground. For more information, check out How to Fertilize Your Lawn.

Just like your lawn has been resting over the winter, you lawn mower has been hibernating as well. Before starting it up for the first time, make sure there’s plenty of oil and fresh gas in the tank. You can use pump gasoline or ready-mixed fuel that’s ethanol-free. If it’s been a few years and your mower is hard to start, you may have to replace the spark plug as well. Check the belts for cracking and other signs of wear and replace if needed. 

Sharpening your mower blade is also an important step for a healthy lawn. Sharp mower blades cut the grass blades cleanly, where a dull or damaged blade will tear the blade, leaving ugly brown ends. When mowing for the first time in the spring, think less is more. Mowing more frequently, say every five days or so, while trimming no more than 1/3 of the grass blade will help your grass thrive in this early growth period.

Applying mulch won’t only add beauty and texture to your lawn, it’s also great for helping to control and kill weeds. Mulching an area where it’s difficult to grow grass and adding a border of colored mulch are easy projects that’ll help your lawn’s appeal. 

Mid- to late spring are the best times to lay down mulch. Spreading too early will slow down the soil’s ability to fully warm up. If applying around plants, 1 to 4 inches of mulch should suffice, depending upon the texture of your mulch. In areas where weed control is the goal, you can lay mulch down as thick as you desire. Laying down landscape fabric will help prevent any weeds from popping up.

Landscape edging and retaining wall blocks are fine accents to mulched areas and help make a border between your grass and landscaped spaces.