How Can I Keep a Healthy Lawn in Winter?
The winter can be tough on your New Mexico lawn. Without a tender loving care, the cold weather, dry conditions and constant freeze/thaw cycle can bring even the healthiest lawns to their knees.
Winterizing it to keep it healthy will help you avoid problems once spring arrives and ensure that when it does your lawn comes back to life greener and healthier than ever.
Here is some advice to help your lawn endure even the harshest winters:
How to Keep Your Lawn Dormant and Healthy During Winter
Fall Clean Up for your Lawn
The best way to ensure your lawn will be most healthy is to start preparing it before winter arrives.
Once the grass has gone dormant for the year, it’s time to give your lawn a once over, taking care to remove any fallen leaves, weeds, dead plants and other debris.
This will allow your grass to receive maximum sunlight, as well as prevent you from competing for nutrients. Outdoor furniture is also best moved occasionally, so you don’t kill the grass underneath.
Aerate and Dethatch Your Lawn
After your lawn has been cleaned, the next thing to do is dethatch, and aerate. In Colorado, the ideal time to do this is early spring or fall (when the grass is still growing) so it can recover quickly.
First, it’s best to dethatch your lawn, which makes it easier to aerate, and helps your lawn’s overall health.
Remember that a thin layer of thatch (less than ½” thick) is actually beneficial to your lawn’s health. But once thatch gets too think (usually a problem at about 1″ thick) it’ll hold water, nutrients, and air from getting through to your plants’ roots.
In most cases, it’s wise to dethatch your lawn once a year if needed. Aerating should then always be done once or even twice a year to preserve the health of your lawn.
Overseed Before the Cold Sets In
The process of dethatching and aerating the lawn will create mostly bare spots, so overseeding will help fill those spots in, and also allow the lawn to grow back greener and healthier overall. In Colorado’s climate, the best types of grass to use are cool season grasses, such as Kentucky bluegrass or fescues.
Early autumn is the ideal time of year to overseed, so the grass seed has some time to germinate and establish the before the weather turns too cold. Once you overseed, water the grass every single day (up to 3x a day) until the new seed has taken.
Fertilize Your Lawn to Prepare It for the Winter
The last step in prepping your lawn for the winter is to keep it well-fed after you’ve added new grass seed. The winter fertilizer will ensure your lawn receives in full the nutrients it needs through winter months.
Dethatching and aeration are essential steps prior to use of fertilizer for ensuring that the fertilizer will penetrate properly all the way to the root zone in the soil.
Avoid Harming Your Lawn When Using Ice-Melt Products
After all this work preparing your lawn for winter, it’s important to make sure you keep it as healthy as possible. If using ice melted products, use sparingly, as chemical runoff can hurt your lawn and plants.
Of all the commercially available products, calcium chloride is the most plant-friendly ice melt product, since plants can absorb quite large amounts of calcium relatively easily.
Burlap screens, if truly needed, are an effective barrier from the spray of melting snow and ice. Drainage improvements along walkways and rerouting runoff away from your lawn and plants will also help ensure they’re neither scarred by harsh chemicals and salts.
Want to Get Your Lawn Ready for Winter and Healthy All Year Long?
At R & S Landscaping we know what it takes to help your property stand out from the neighbors. As a seasonal landscape service company, we believe that regular landscape maintenance is essential to keeping your property looking its best year-round.
We have been doing so for Albuquerque-area businesses and commercial properties for over 40 years. Services
We Provide:
- Lawn Care & Maintenance,
- Sprinkler Installation & Maintenance,
- Tree & Shrub Care, Landscape Enhancements,
- Storm Cleanup, Snow Removal (for when the weather goes bad).
Call R & S Landscaping today at (505) 271-8419 or contact us online today to learn more about what we can do for your commercial property!