Preparing your turf for the long, cold winter.

Frost has licked your grass a few times, the leaves are dropping and your thoughts move toward putting your lawn to bed for the winter. So how do you prepare your lawn for snow and dormancy?  Number one, it helps to think of your turf as an all year plant stand instead of a seasonal one. Even though it may go dormant, your lawn will still be alive and where we end this season IS where we’ll pick up next! A few steps now will ensure weeks of head start next spring and a much healthier turf at the beginning of next year.

Mowing- After the first frost, you should begin moving your mower height down in half inch increments each week, aiming at a final cut height of around two inches tall. By taking it down in small pieces, you will avoid stressing the turf and pulling out grass rather than cutting it. You may continue to mulch mow right up until the end if you prefer. Watch for scalp spots, an indicator that you may be too low. Leaves may be mulched as well as long as there are not so many that it leaves a thick layer on the turf after finished. It’s a free organic fertilizer as long as it doesn’t build up covering the grass. With a true mulching deck, they will shred up very fine, even if partially wet, and will break down before your next mowing. Do not mow your grass while there is still frost on it. This can lead to breaking off the blade like an icicle, right at the ground height, killing the grass plant. You’ll generally see this as dead wheel lines and can happen in the spring and the fall, so wait til the sun has been out for a bit and dried things up as well. By working the turf shorter, you decrease the likelihood of diseases like snow mold and damage from rodents, like mice, using it as shelter and forage beneath snow.

Water- In the cooler temps, you will not need nearly as much water to the turf. Once every 10 days with temps in the 60s or lower will keep your plants happy. If Mother Nature is providing, all the better. One thing you want to be wary of is letting it get too dry. Oddly enough, this can actually bring on drought stress in the cool temps, something we are definitely not wanting for our turf, possibly setting back all the good work we did in the fall. It’s also important to keep water available for your trees and shrubs, especially evergreens, right up until freezing temps make it necessary to shut down your irrigation system. At that point, we’re going to have to put it into nature’s hands until spring. Watering as long as you can safely do it, if rain is not falling, is an insurance policy to preserve your plants. Once the turf goes dormant from cold, not water, you can concentrate soley on your evergreens.

Fertilizer and weed control- There are varying opinions on the value of applying a winterizer fertilizer to your turf or spraying broadleaf weeds past the first hard frost. In our experience, a fertilizer put down as a 100% slow release product after the final mowing and waterings, will slowly move into the soil during the winter months, making itself available in the soil profile as soon as temps encourage plant uptake. This generally makes for a darker, healthier turf, earlier in the spring. Your turf will continue nutrient intake during dormancy, just in very small amounts. Adding fert at this late point will NOT make your grass continue to grow long beneath snow, even if there is no snow blanket for a part of the winter. Your turf needs longer hours of sunlight and warm soil temperatures to grow, without those, it will be in winter dormancy, regardless of your fertilizer., not growing and needing mowing. For weed control, many cool season weeds, like dandelions, are back up in the fall. They are fairly frost hardy, but will be taken down by a hard frost, just like most of your flowers. The key is their life cycle. If a hard frost does not take them out before they get a chance to seed, you may be allowing hundreds of new weeds seeds to be planted in your lawn, waiting patiently for an opening. If they are still actively growing, go ahead and spray or pull them, if they are burnt down by cold temps and stunted, you may still pull them but we would not suggest spraying as plant intake may be retarded, wasting your herbicide.

Leaves- As we covered above, you do have the option of mulching leaves until they build up to a thick layer. At this point, it’s time to grab a rake or your mower with a bag on it. Your enemy here is not the leaf itself, a valuable source of nutrients, but rather a blocking layer from sunlight, air and water. Get it up and off if you have that leaf volume and look for a favorable way to reuse them, whether it’s through a municipal composting facility, your own compost pile or if they are shredded from your mower, working them back into your flower beds or gardens. That’s the secret for many master gardeners and it’s a much better solution than just dumping them in your garbage can.
As you can see, there’s not a lot of technical difficulty in prepping for the winter, yet it can repay huge dividends next spring in the health of your yard. Enjoy some of the nice fall temps outside while they last then we can get in and root for the Jazz until spring draws us back out again!