Prepare Your Yard for Fall!
The kids are back in school, Labor Day weekend is around the corner, and it’s almost time to prepare your yard for fall. To help you figure out what kind of fall lawn care and tree maintenance you need this year, our Memphis tree service team has put together a few pre-frost tips for your yard.
Evaluate Your Fall Lawn Care Needs
Before you take action with your fall lawn care, walk around your yard and evaluate which plants, trees, or grass patches need your attention. If thriving plants have run out of space to continue growing, consider dividing them among different parts of your yard. Take note of any particularly struggling plants and make decisions on whether to move them to another part of the yard where they might be more successful next year.
Most importantly for fall lawn care, you should look for diseased parts of plants and dead limbs of trees that need to be pruned. Also find bare spots in your grass that could use fresh seeding.
Follow a Fall Lawn Care Schedule
After you have determined what your yard calls for in terms of fall lawn care, go ahead and get started! In the late summer and early fall, continue removing weeds, deadheading wilted flowers, watering and mowing when necessary.
In the fall, weeds and plants try to store up as much energy as possible from sun and watering, so spraying weeds with pesticides during this season means they will soak up the chemicals faster and die easier. Similarly, tree roots will accept fertilizer particularly well in the early fall.
For the final mow or two, cut the grass as short as possible so nutrients can reach the roots better and there will be a smaller amount of blade to turn that unattractive brown. Before the grass turns brown though, make sure to aerate it to help it absorb nourishment more efficiently and fill bare spots with fresh seeds now so they can germinate before the first frost.
Also look for and tend to spots that need more mulch, and remember that deeper blankets of mulch are more protective for winter months. In the winter, not only does mulch help plants retain nutrients but also it helps to keep temperatures balanced throughout a soil bed. However, make sure to remove mulch from plant branches to prevent yellowing.
It is important to get rid of dead tree branches in the late summer or early fall, but you have to be careful as to when and how much pruning you implement to keep the tree from becoming too vulnerable to further disease. For this reason, having an expert Memphis tree service like Red’s evaluate and prune your trees is safer than trying to do it yourself.
Take Care of Your Lawn Tools
Don’t forget about your lawn tools while you’re focused on fall lawn care. During the pruning process, make sure to disinfect your lawn tools regularly so you don’t spread disease from one plant to another.
Chances are you have used all of your lawn tools frequently over the summer and will store a lot of them away come winter, so make sure they are cleaned and sharpened so they will be ready to use when you need them next spring. While it’s still warm, find and repair any leaks or other problems in your hoses or irrigation system and organize your garden shed for next season.
Fall Lawn Care Assistance
If you have any lingering questions about fall lawn care, please feel free to contact us for more advice and recommendations. Also, if you aren’t able or don’t have time to commit to fall lawn care yourself, please contact Red’s Tree Service, your dependable Memphis tree service, for your trimming and fertilization needs.