If your lawn is anything like mine, it’s potentially looking rather dead. At the very least, it certainly needs some extra care. Sadly though, I’m a self-confessed hopeless case when it comes to grass. Your lawn may look like it needs extra care, mine looks like it needs an operating theatre! The advice we need clearly can’t come from me! So to help us out I asked specialist lawncare blogger Josh from Lawn Care Pro to step in. Here’s his advice on preparing your lawn for autumn and winter…
Preparing Your Lawn for Autumn
The autumn is one of the best times of year for lawn growth. So you really want to get your lawn ready to take advantage of this this important growth period. This is especially the case if your grass is currently looking a bit worse for wear.
Consistent watering
At the moment, your lawn might be a bit dry, unless you’ve been taking the time to water it regularly.
To prepare your lawn for autumn, it’s a good idea to give it a good watering every couple of days. Do this from 9 to 10am. Of course, this is assuming that there isn’t a hosepipe ban where you live at the moment! By watering in the morning, you’ll give the moisture time to soak in, before the sun can evaporate it.
The reason to do this now is July and autumn are typically the wettest times of the year. So your lawn is expecting to get a bit of a soak at this time. If your lawn is really dry, consistent watering can help to rejuvenate it as the weather begins to cool down. Hopefully there will be a bit more rain over the next month or so, reducing how often you need to get out the sprinkler.
Overseeding
While keeping the lawn nice and wet during the late summer, it’s a great time to do some overseeding. This is especially true if your lawn is looking a bit sparse, or has bare patches.
For those unaware, overseeding is the process of spreading grass seeds on an existing lawn, to help improve its growth. You can either:
- Spread seeds on individual patches, to target bare spots.
- Spread seeds across the entire lawn, to improve grass density.
You can spread grass seeds by hand, or for ease use a hand-held or cart-driven lawn spreader. Hand-spreading is fine if you’re targeting bare patches, but you might want a more efficient way of doing things if you’re overseeding a large lawn.
The Overseeding Process
To overseed your lawn successfully, you can use the following process.
- Mow your lawn quite short, to a height of about 2 inches, and collect your clippings.
- With a rake, clear as much debris as possible from the surface of your lawn. This ensures that your grass seeds can reach the soil more easily, and increases the amount of sunlight and moisture they’ll get once spread.
- Spread some compost on your lawn using your rake. Even if you’re only targeting bare patches, it’s often a good idea to use fertiliser on your entire lawn, especially if you haven’t done so recently.
- Spread your grass seeds as per the packet instructions. Ideally, you will want to choose a seed mix that’s similar to the type of grass that’s already on your lawn, especially if you’ll be overseeding bare patches.
- Water the lawn immediately, until the soil is nice and moist.
- Continue watering the lawn at least once a day, and ideally twice daily, until the seeds begin to sprout. At this point, keep watering your lawn every day or so until the new grass grows at least a few inches tall.
Ensure to keep pets and animals off the overseeded areas as much as possible during this process. Overseeding will have your lawn out of action for at least three weeks, so you might like to delay it a bit if you’re still using your lawn every day at the end of summer.
Preparing Your Lawn for Winter
In late October and early November, you want to begin preparing your lawn for hibernation during winter. Your lawn can be quite delicate at this time of year, especially if it’s not in the best of health, so you want to do everything you possibly can to make things easier for your grass as the weather gets colder.
Clear Debris on a Regular Basis
During the autumn months, it’s likely you’ll have a decent amount of fallen leaves and other debris on your lawn in places.
The problem is, as winter sets in, this debris blocks valuable sunlight, and also introduces dampness to your lawn. If left unattended, you’ll quickly find yourself with a moss problem.
Before you get your first frost, clear all of the leaves, twigs, and other debris from your lawn, and continue to do so on a regular basis as the weather gets colder. However, once it gets frosty, avoid walking on your lawn too much, as this can damage the grass.
Pay Attention to your Mowing Schedule
Since your lawn has less sunlight to work with, you need to be particularly careful with your mowing schedule at this time of year to avoid stressing out your lawn.
In October and November, raise the cutting height on your mower, and take less off your grass with each cut. Generally, it’s recommended to follow the one-third rule – never take off more than a third of the height of the grass with each cut. But at this time of year, you might like to only take off a quarter, to give your lawn a better chance to recover.
Keep a close eye on how fast your grass is growing, and reduce your mowing frequency accordingly. If your lawn isn’t growing, don’t mow it, and avoid mowing when the ground is wet or frosty.
When you do your final mow for the year, which should be in late November, you want to leave your grass about 2 inches tall. If in doubt, it’s best to err on the side of leaving your grass longer, so that it isn’t stressed out too much as it enters hibernation.
Thank you Josh for these preparing your lawn tips…
A big thank you to Josh for this advice on preparing your lawn for autumn and winter. The only piece of advice I’d add is that if you are raking up the leaves from your grass in autumn, and winter, don’t forget to use them to make leaf mould. As you can see from my blog Leaf mould – how to make it it’s so easy to make. And it’s really satisfying improving your soil or mulching your plants with something you’ve made yourself!
Right I’d better be off. We’ve a hosepipe ban in place at the moment so I’m going to spend my afternoon doing a bit of a rain dance, hoping for a downpour so that I can then water my lawn and start putting Josh’s top advice into practice. Happy gardening! x