A Cut Above

By the time autumn rolls around, many homeowners are tired of lawn maintenance. After all, you’ve spent the entire summer watering, trimming, mowing, and taking steps to ensure your lush, green grass stays that way. And then the leaves start to fall.

Although you might be tempted to let the fall leaves stay on the grass for the winter, it’s rarely a good idea to let the leaves just lay there, and not because your neighbors might complain.

Leaf Lawn Damage

Fallen leaves have nutrients th at are great for enriching the soil. When they biodegrade naturally, they leave behind carbon, nitrogen, and other organic matter essential to plant growth. Worms love this stuff, and they pull it into the soil and leave behind worm castings that do even more to improve your lawn.

But this isn’t what happens when leaves are just covering the lawn. It takes leaves a long time to break all the way down, and when they fully cover the lawn, they limit the amount of sunlight and oxygen getting to the grass—something you really want, especially if you’ve recently planted grass seed. Large clumps of leaves can also create soggy piles that turn turf into mud, which is also less-than-ideal when you’re building up a lawn.

Many, if not most, homeowners rake the leaves into piles and haul them away. However, it’s a much better idea (and easier than raking!) to mulch the leaves. This way, your lawn retains the nutrients and stays neat and tidy. 

Why Mulch?

Mulching leaves (chopping them into smaller, more easily broken down pieces) is a great way to keep the nutrients without sacrificing aesthetics. By breaking the leaves into pieces so small they can’t be seen by the naked eye, you can keep everything looking neat. At the same time, these smaller pieces will break down faster, meaning you’ll get more nutrients at a faster rate—something that’s ideal when you’re prepping your lawn for winter.

The decreased noise and increased clipping control of a rear-discharge mower are ideal for maintaining residential properties.

This process is also much easier than most people realize. Mow over the leaves and discharge the clippings over the lawn. Areas of especially heavy mulch deposit might require you to spread the debris by hand, but most of the work will be done by your lawn equipment. You can invest in micro mulching kits for your mower, but if you have an Exmark mower with an UltraCut Rear Discharge cutting system, you shouldn’t need one. The excellent clipping control mean you can decide where the mulch will be deposited.

Don’t Let Your Leaves Lie All Winter

Leaves left on the lawn during fall will soon become frozen clumps during the winter, and be soggy piles in the spring. Get ahead of your maintenance game this year by mulching your leaves. Your grass will thank you—and so will your neighbors!

Fertilizing your lawn should be part of your regular, comprehensive lawn maintenance plan.

If you care about keeping your lawn looking lush and green for as long as possible, you’ve probably used (or considered using) fertilizer. After all, when things start to look patchy and dry, it’s an issue of not enough nutrients in the soil, right?

Not necessarily. Although there are times and situations when fertilizing your lawn is the right choice, it’s not a universal cure-all. Instead, it should be used as part of a regular, comprehensive lawn maintenance plan that takes all parts of the grass life cycle into account.

Types of Grass

The type of grass in your lawn of will be the number one indicator of when and how you should fertilize. Because the best time to fertilize your grass is during its peak growing season (in the same way animals and people need extra nutrition during their growth spurts), it’s important to know when your lawn is expected to put in the most work. Cool-season grasses (typically found in northern states) tend to grow most in the early spring and fall. Warm-season grasses (typically found in the South) will do more of their growth in the humid heat of summer.

Things start to get tricky when you have a mixture of both these types of grasses, so it’s important to tailor a fertilization schedule to your exact lawn.

Fertilizer Contents

No two fertilizers are created equally, so it’s important to know what’s going in yours. Most fertilizers are composed of some combination of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium—as well as a few other nutrients like iron that grass needs to stay healthy. However, too much of one ingredient (especially nitrogen) at the wrong time, and you could end up damaging the grass. Because nitrogen stimulates top growth, it can end up taking nutrition away from the roots or causing off-season growth.

Fertilizer Alternatives

Another issue to take into account are other, more natural alternatives to fertilizing a lawn. For example, the mulch left in grass

clippings contains natural nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. By allowing grass clippings to remain on the lawn, you can re-introduce these minerals without resorting to fertilizer.

Core aeration can be beneficial for most lawns if performed at the right time for the type of turf grass you’re working with.

Other options include aeration, over-seeding, and timing your water cycles. Aeration, which perforates the soil with small holes, helps introduce oxygen, water, and fertilizer nutrients into the lawn. Over-seeding gives your lawn a chance to appear more lush and thick. Watering the lawn can also make a big difference, especially when it comes to cool-season grasses, which often go dormant in the heat of summer.

Depending on your lawn goals, any and all of these efforts can make a difference. With the right planning, a fertilizer can be used alongside other types of lawn maintenance to create the most desirable, green finish possible.

If you’re lucky, you’ve spent most of 2016 enjoying a beautiful green lawn rolling off in every direction. If you’re not so lucky, and your lawn is less like a rolling landscape and more like a DIY project, there’s still good news—fall is the perfect time to start a new lawn care schedule.

You don’t have to buy tons of tools or lawn care equipment (though it helps!), as long as you follow a few suggestions on timing for making the most out of your yard.

Early Fall

By aerating your lawn and loosening the soil, you can better prepare the grass for a healthy lifecycle.

Early fall is an ideal time to tackle those bare spots, thin patches of grass, and dead areas in your lawn. If you have warm-season grass, you’ll want to do this while temperatures are high; for those with cool-season grass, it’s best to wait until the weather isn’t so hot.

Start by loosening the soil in the patchy areas either by hand or using an aerator. From there, you can remove the dead grass and add rich compost to create the best growing bed. Sprinkle grass seed, moisten the area with mulch, and be sure to apply water to help the grass seeds take root.

Early fall is also a great time to take care of any lingering weed problems. New compost and heavy water applications aren’t just ideal for grass growth—they also promote the development of weeds. By taking the time to get rid of any weeds now, you can tackle the rest of your lawn care without worry.

Mid-Fall

The middle of fall is when you want to aerate and over-seed your lawn for next year’s growth cycle. To take care of a full yard, you’ll want to use equipment from our Exmark aerator line and lawn spreader sprayer equipment, as these tools are designed to get beautiful results over a large surface area.

Seeding is important during mid-fall as the fall burst of growth in cool-season grass is some of the most natural and easy to take care of.

By aerating your lawn and loosening the soil, you can better prepare the grass for a healthy lifecycle. Seeding is also important during this time, as the fall burst of growth in cool-season grass is some of the most natural and easy to take care of.

Although you may be tempted to fertilize and mow at this time, it’s important to give your new fledgling grass a chance to take root. Stay away from the fertilizer altogether, and focus instead on things like edging and trimming.

Late Fall

As the cool weather continues, you’re going to start seeing a lot of debris and leaves falling from nearby trees and bushes. Your main job now is to keep that debris from covering your lawn and preventing sun and water from getting to the grass and roots.

A mulching mower will go a long way in breaking up the leaves and organic matter without damaging the grass below. This mulch is also a great way to put nutrients into the soil without introducing fertilizers, so take advantage of as much (or as little) of it as you want.

Few things are more frustrating than to seed, water, mow, and maintain your lawn only to have bald patches ruining the overall effect. These dead, dry brown spots tend to crop up during the summer months, which is why now is a good time to take care of them.

Take care of lawn patches now to keep your lawn at its best.

Causes of Lawn Patches

In order to get rid of your problem for good, it’s important to identify what caused the bare spot. The most common (and easiest to repair) reason is high foot traffic. Paths for humans or animals can wear down over time, and until you create an alternate walkway or put up a barrier, the grass isn’t likely to come back.

Other causes of bare patches in your lawn may include:

• Drought
• Under-watering
• Disease
• Pet waste
• Chemical burns
• Excessive weeds
• Insect Infestation
• Fungus

If necessary, treat the underlying cause of the problem first. Depending on your situation, this may require that you apply chemical treatments, hire an exterminator, or wait until water restrictions in your area are lifted.

Conditions for Re-Seeding

Late summer/early fall is a good time to fix bare spots, but if you’re doing this later in the fall or early in the spring, remember that ground temps need to be at least 52 degrees for seeds to sprout. Grass also prefers a clean slate on which to grow, as it’s not great at competing with weeds for space. Most experts suggest that you take the following steps to prepare the spot in your lawn:

• Remove the dead turf and other plant life. Depending on the size of your patch, this can be accomplished with a spade or a larger shovel.

• Clear any large rocks or clumps. The smoother the soil, the better the chances that your new grass will take hold.

• Add topsoil. Because you’re likely removing an inch or two of dead turf and debris, you’ll need to add fresh topsoil to keep your lawn smooth and level.

Re-Seeding Your Lawn

Always choose a grass seed mixture that matches your existing lawn or that thrives in your area. Different grasses need different conditions, and you’ll get the best results by keeping your local climate conditions in mind. From there, you’ll want to:

• Generously seed the area. You can sprinkle seeds by hand, or use an applicator for larger patches.

• Apply a mulch. Grass seeds tend to be delicate in their early stages, so you’ll want to help keep it moist and prevent birds from eating it. Many grass seed brands come with mulch included, or you can use a material like straw.

• Water twice a day until the seeds sprout. Morning and evening are the best times to water. After the seeds sprout, reduce the watering to once a day.

• Fertilize the grass. Most fertilizers are too strong for new grass, so you’ll want to wait until you have a healthy growth before you fertilize.

Because you want to give your new grass a chance to thrive, it’s also a good idea to restrict walking and mowing/lawn care in the area. By the time fall arrives, you should have a nice, strong, consistent lawn and you can resume regular lawn maintenance.