Just because the weather is getting colder, the days are shorter, and the rain more frequent, doesn’t mean that it’s time to put away the gardening tools and close up the shed until next spring. Your fall and winter residential landscaping service is just as important as your spring and summer landscape maintenance for ensuring a healthy lawn and garden. Here are 6 things you should be doing now to make sure your landscaping is ready for spring:
Your Lawn
As the weather grows colder, your lawn also continues to grow. You should continue to have your lawn mower until it stops growing, making sure that your last cut of the season is a little shorter than normal, this will help protect the grass against pests, frost, and snow, and ensure your lawn continues to look great all winter.
Leaves and pine needles need to be continuously raked as long as they are falling; leaving them to collect over the winter months can potentially kill your grass. Throughout the spring, summer, and fall, you grass uses sunlight to transform nitrogen into food, and while it will go through a dormant period as the temperatures drop in the winter, access to sunlight and a winter fertilizer can help ensure a thick healthy lawn come spring.
Aeration in the fall is an important residential landscaping service that should not be skipped. Not only does it help to provide important nutrients to your grass, proper aeration can help prevent puddles from forming during the long, rainy winter months.
Your Landscaping
Plants, trees, and shrubs also require seasonal residential landscaping service before the cold sets in. In the fall, you should prepare your landscaping for cold weather and snow, this will help ensure that it is healthy and ready for spring. Late fall to early winter is the perfect time to trim and prune overgrown shrubs and hedges and to remove broken or dying branches from trees, which are more likely to suffer damage due to wind and snow.
A thorough cleaning of garden beds is highly recommended. Remove leaves, branches and other debris, and apply a fresh layer of mulch around shrubs and trees to help offer extra protection against the cold and snow.
If you live in an area more susceptible to moss accumulation, winter is also a good time to apply a moss spray. Once your grass stops growing, moss can quickly take over, spraying now can mean little to no moss build-up come spring.
A good-looking lawn and garden is a year round job, and a little work done now will help to ensure beautiful landscaping come spring.