Winter is a serious business. Before you know it, your beautiful lawn will be covered in a blanket of ice and snow. Be sure to prepare so that your grass, shrubs, and plants spring back to life and health when the seasons turn again. Right now (in October and November), is the perfect time to prepare, or winterize your lawn so that it will be the envy of the neighborhood, come spring.
Why Winterize
You may think that your grass is as dumb as…well, grass; that it just sits there waiting to freeze its roots off when the temperature starts dropping. Actually, grass is cleverer than you might think. Cool season grasses can feel when the temperature begins to dip, and they know that it’s time to shunt their energy away from its surface leaves and down to their roots so that they can hibernate during the winter. Come spring, your grass will need to call on those reserves of energy to do lots of growing as the weather warms up.
A big part of winterization is giving your lawn the right dose of high quality fertilizer so that all of your plants have plenty of energy to store through the winter. You won’t be able to do a thing for your lawn during the winter months, and by spring it will be too little, too late. The time to fertilize is right now!
More Winterization Tips
If you are going to make the effort to fertilize your lawn as part of your winterization efforts, you might as well go all-in. Give your lawn even more support by aerating and seeding. Aerating your lawn helps introduce more oxygen into the soil, which the roots of your grass and plants will be eager to gobble up. Seeding can also address any patchy or bald spots on your lawn that a hot summer, lots of use, and pets have a tendency to create.
You’ll definitely be able to see the results of all of your efforts if you winterize the right way. When the snows melts, your grass will spring back to life, lush, green, and healthy. The more grass that grows, the less room for weeds to find their way in!
Make Sure You Include a Sprinkler Blowout as Part of Your Lawn Winterization Plan
You can easily perform all of the lawn winterization tips included in this article by yourself over a few hours on the weekend, but there is one more important winterization activity that you should hire professionals to perform. During a long, cold winter, the frost can go deep into the ground and freeze any liquid that remains in your irrigation pipes. Since water expands when it freezes, it can damage your pipes, which will be expensive to fix.
Call a professional lawn care company, like Tanz, Inc. to perform a sprinkler blowout. We will use an air compressor to forcefully blow all of the remaining water out of your irrigation system before the winter cold sets in. A blowout requires the use of dangerous equipment, and it is not recommended that you try to do it on your own. Instead, let us handle this last part of your winterization plan. A yearly sprinkler blowout is necessary in New Jersey, where the winters always include deep frosts. If you live in Morris or Middlesex County, call us to schedule your sprinkler blowout today. Even North Carolina experiences winters cold enough to justify a sprinkler blowout. Don’t gamble with your sprinkler system. If you live in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina call us to schedule a sprinkler blowout. If you schedule your blowout before Thanksgiving, we will provide a full warranty on our work.
