Tips to get your lawn ready for fall
To prepare your lawn, you must get off the couch and start working on the following tips:-
Proper Watering
When it comes to fall time and watering, we mustn't overwater the lawn, and underwater the lawn. If you cut the water supply of your lawn too early, then your lawn will look dull and stressed. This will make the grass enforced to protect itself or lead to dormancy, and affects the development of the roots.
So, watering your lawn about a quarter of an inch once a week to force water down to the roots. Perhaps, watering depends on how far the water is penetrating the soil so you must look for the absorption quantity also.
It is very typical that with the start of the fall the daytime and nighttime temperatures begin to come down dramatically. It means that there will be less water evaporation in the fall and too much watering will not be required.
Every lawn and soil is different depending upon the area, so there is no possible way to tell how many minutes you need to keep your sprinkler on. You can check how much water has penetrated the soil by plugging a screwdriver. A good and easy plugging will be about 6 to 8 inches.
Lowering the height of cut
It is important to lower the height of the cut while preparing your lawn for the fall. It is to be done to prevent fungal infections like snow molds. Two ways are recommended by the experts to safely lower the height of the cut:-
- Keep the grass long and increase the mowing frequency. If you are mowing only once a week then increase it 2 to 3 times per week and gradually step down the lawn to avoid undue stress on the lawn.
- Wait for the ground temperature to get below 40 degrees. At that time, the grass is grown topically and you can safely mow from 4 inches down to 1 inch. The only problem to cut this way is going to make your lawn look-like hay all winter lawn instead of having a nice & rich color leading into winter.
Lawn cleaning
Doing the lawn cleaning at the end of the season is a very important part. If the mower blades are not perfect, it may leave the debris on the soil surface but a certain amount of debris must be left on the top of the soil.
During fall, trees start dropping leaves and seeds, so when this happens it ends up acting like a mulch or a weed barrier and suffocating the lawn. Another problem due to irregular cleaning of the lawn is a fungus. When there is too much stuff like dry leaves, debris, and dirt left on the soil surface it causes fungus. Therefore, a great remedy that you can use to prevent fungus and prepare your lawn before fall is a dethatcher. You can also use a dethatcher rake to pull all dirt out before and during the fall.
