An easy-to-follow spring lawn care checklist to help get your yard into the best position to thrive this year.
Lawn & Garden Season
The first day of spring has come and gone, isn’t it eerie how fast time goes by? This means that lawn and garden season is right around the corner. To have a vibrant and healthy lawn come summer, you need to start nurturing it now. Get your lawn into top shape for the warm days ahead by following this spring lawn care checklist.
Spring Lawn Care Checklist to Best Prepare For The Year
Rake Dead Leaves
If any leaves remain, rake them up now to perk up your yard for spring, and dispose of them with compost or yard waste. Damp, dead foliage can promote diseases. This simple action will drastically improve your yard's look and feel and get you excited for the lawn and gardening season ahead. Beyond improving the look of your yard, raking further improves the health of your lawn by combating thatch, which we’ll discuss later.
Trim Perennials & Ornamental Grasses
Come spring, perennial plants, and ornamental grasses can look bedraggled, with brown, dead growth making your yard look messy. Trimming this back not only improves the appearance of your yard but also gives room for the new shoots to grow. Clip grass shoots or perennial growing to a maximum height of 2-3 inches using hand pruners. As the new shoots grow in, they will camouflage the dead growth.
Even Out Your Turf
Winter can cause frost heaves, which leave peaks and valleys in your lawn. Top off any low patches with fresh turf and level out any hills to create an even starting base. Don't worry about any bare patches you're creating when you do this, as you'll fill them in presently.
Seed Your Lawn
Snowplows, shovels, road salt, and disease can damage and kill grass, leaving your yard bare. Inspect your yard and identify any damaged patches that need to be reseeded. Sow grass seed on these patches when the forsythia blooms in your area, scattering the seed by hand. Cover with a light layer of compost to improve insulation in the area.
Nurture Seeded Grass
To germinate, grass seed needs to be kept moist. Make a daily habit of watering your seeded lawn until the seed sprouts. Your grass seed bag should indicate how long the grass takes to sprout on average, which gives you a guideline.
Rake the Lawn to Prevent Thatch
Certain types of thick grass (notably Bermuda grass and Zoysia) are prone to thatch or matting. This makes it difficult for water and nutrients to penetrate the soil and can sabotage a lawn. Get on this early by raking the grass in spring to break up any mats that have formed, using a special grass rake or dethatcher.
Fertilize
Fertilizing restores the nutrient balance to your lawn so everything can grow its best. Using nutrient-rich fertilizer like Scotts Turf Builder in the early spring gets your grass off to a great start to take on the rest of the year.
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