Don’t Make These Lawn Mistakes in the Fall
With the change of the season comes changes in our landscaping habits. The temperatures drop, the air climate changes, and depending on where you live in Arizona and Colorado, you’ll get more rain. Your landscaping activities may have to change so all the progress and work you’ve done over the spring and summer don’t go to waste. It only takes a few bad landscaping mistakes to set you back.
We’re familiar with a few common landscaping mistakes other people have made. Make sure you don’t make the same mistake yourself, or if you have, get the supplies you need to heal your lawn.
#1. Stop Watering Your Grass
We hear about a lot of people making this mistake where the rainfall is heaviest. If it rains, you’ll want to pull back on how much you water your lawn and when, but you can’t rely on it.
Much like in the summer, the beginning of fall is getting hotter. In previous years, the fall wouldn’t have been able to turn the grass brown, but if you don’t water in between the inconsistent rainstorms, it can.
Your lawn needs an average of 1 to 1.5 inches of water per week. If the raindrops are more than that, you can’t assume that you’ll be good for two weeks, maybe not even a week and a half, with how hot the temperatures can be before heading into winter.
#2. Don’t Mow Less
Many know that if you didn’t keep your grass healthy during the summer, it would be hard for all the water to seep into the ground before the heat evaporates it. Fall temperatures aren’t so much cooler that this won’t happen in the first month of the fall too.
Maintain your mowing schedule, weather permitting. You can adjust how high you want to keep your grass deep into the fall season, but even then, you don’t want to mow less. You should maintain your mowing schedule to maintain the height of your grass.
#3. Don’t Winterize Your Lawn Too Early
When you prepare your lawn for winter, you aerate it, fertilize it, rake it, and remove dead plants. You want to do this as the cold is settling in. If you do this halfway through the fall season or at the beginning, you’ll leave your lawn vulnerable to the heat.
During the winter, your lawn has fewer resources to go around, whereas, in the summer, the resources were more plentiful but not as long-lasting. You need to prepare your yard to survive those months, but if you do it too early, you leave your plants vulnerable to the fall. The fall is rarely as chilly as the summer, and your lawn will be unprepared for it. Even the parts that survive may not last the winter because you started the winterization cycle too early.
Wait until you are closer to the start of winter than you are to the middle of fall before you start winterization. Feel free to plan by getting the supplies ahead of time though. That’s always smart thinking.
#4. Don’t Stop Fertilizing
This might sound strange because fertilizing is a part of winterization and we said not to winterize too early. The balance is that when you fertilize your lawn, you don’t fertilize the same amount for the fall as you would when winterizing. In the fall, you don’t need to lay down as much fertilizer. If you overdo you can burn your lawn, but if you don’t do it at all, your lawn may not have the nutrients it needs.
#5. Don’t Stop Killing the Weeds
Weeds flourish during the summer. The competitive environment and their competitive root systems allow them to take all the water and nutrients while killing off the other plants. In the fall, there’s more water and nutrients to go around, but that doesn’t mean you should leave them be. Your grass, flowers, and shrubs may be able to survive, but there’s no guarantee.
A lot of homeowners may see their weed problem grow bigger over the fall and winter than in the summer if they grow lax when killing weeds. If you see one, pull it out when they’re most vulnerable. The best time for everything to grow is the best time to kill your weeds.
#6. Don’t Let Your Leaves Build-Up
Leaves fall at different times of the year for different trees. This means that some trees will find themselves without leaves earlier than others. When this happens, don’t wait to pick them all up at once.
While yes, this can block the light from getting to some leaves, the wind will spread them around before any one spot turns brown in most cases. The main reason is that it's just a big time sink and you’ve made the job of cleaning up your leaves that much harder.
We have tools that can make the job easier, but only so much easier. Use the best tools we sell and use them as often as the leaves come down.
Contact Pioneer Landscape Centers for Help
We have the tools and materials you need to avoid making these lawn mistakes. The fall is coming, and it will do a number on your lawn if you’re not careful. Change your landscaping habits appropriately, and you’ll be fine, with a lawn that will surely last into the winter. Contact your local Pioneer Landscape Centers for help today.