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Should You Do Anything to Help Your Lawn This Winter?

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Mowing, watering and generally tending to the lawn is a practice that is normally reserved for summer, spring and to a lesser extent, autumn. However, many gardeners are saying that homeowners can still help their lawns stay healthy and keep brown patches on lawn gone by taking a few simple measures during the wintertime.   Preparing your lawn for winter should be one of your most important goals. To do that, it’s essential to first know more about your local climate. Is it really cold during the winter (to the point of freezing)? Or does it just get to temperatures of just over 40-50 degrees? If the soil tends to freeze, then you have to aerate your lawn and treat it with winter fertilizer before that time comes. Aerating ensures that the soil is able to receive water and nutrients more efficiently, and winter fertilizer is a special type of slow release fertilizer that does wonders to keep your lawn strong throughout the coldest months of winter.   Covering the lawn wit...

Will Large Amounts of Snow Kill Your Lawn Before Spring?

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Snow has a bad reputation for being extremely cold. After all, it forms in temperatures that are below freezing, and it can cause a lot of damage if it’s present in larger quantities. However, sometimes snow can even act as a protective layer when it covers your lawn as a large blanket during the winter.   Ironically enough, the weather that allows snow to fall and stick to your soil is not typically that cold. Temperatures of -4 to 0 Celsius degrees are common for areas covered in snow. However, once temperatures fall even lower or remain below freezing for a long time, areas with little or no precipitation are actually more negatively affected than those where a lot of snow fell.   As temperatures below the surface of the soil are almost always warmer, seeds and grass roots are typically kept alive and healthy throughout winter. However, if the weather is dry and there is no snow cover to protect the soil, harsh temperatures can freeze your grass and the soil as well, s...

Is It Too Late to Fertilize Your Lawn in December?

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Depending on where you live, the answer to the question of whether or not it’s too late to fertilize your lawn in December can differ greatly. December is typically associated with a white Christmas, freezing temperatures and the fall of snow. But that isn’t the case everywhere, as there are places in southern Texas and New Mexico where people have never even seen snow in their entire lives.   The main issue is one of soil temperature. Fertilizing your soil using the best lawn fertilizer requires the soil to still be somewhat soft and receptive to the nutrients cast out by a slow release fertilizer. This means the temperature can’t be below freezing, so the task is typically handled sometime in early November in most places in the north.   If you live in a warmer area, however, December can be a great time to fertilize your lawn. Since soil temperatures here rarely – if ever – fall below freezing, but in some cases they can still be quite low in late November and early D...

5 Essential Tasks for Preparing Your Lawn for Winter

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Preparing for winter isn’t that easy, and if you want your lawn to stay healthy, you have to consider its integrity as you think of what you can do to protect it from the cold. The following recommended lawn care products and tips should help you out in this regard:   Stop mowing your lawn once it stops growing. The best time to stop mowing your lawn is sometime around October, though that time can be different depending on where you live and how warm the climate is. Use winter fertilizer to give your lawn an extra boost before the arrival of winter. Winter fertilizer helps to keep your lawn fed and healthy during the unforgiving months of the winter season. Aerate your lawn. Winter aeration serves two very important purposes: it gives your lawn more air and enough space for moisture and nutrients to enter the soil, and it prevents the soil from compacting and hardening as the temperatures begin to cause the freeze to set in. Mulch leaves to create a protective layer. Dead...

Choosing the Most Effective Winter Fertilizer for Your Lawn

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Fertilizing your lawn in the winter might seem like a straightforward thing to do, but it is rarely that. In most cases, it’s quite hard to determine what to put into your soil to ensure that the winter temperatures won’t affect your lawn and that the grass will spring up green and healthy in the spring.   There are a few essential factors you have to keep track of:   Slow and fast release fertilizer works differently for different climates and types of soil. They can also have varying effects on your soil, if you aerate it, as a greater amount of nutrients will make their way to the grass roots. The type of grass you had planted is also important, and you will have to ask your supplier to provide the right type of fertilizer to keep your grass healthy. Forgiving winter temperatures support faster release organic fertilizer Denver stores sell , while cold winter temperatures will require you to use special winterizing fertilizers to keep your lawn in good condition unt...

Should You Add Anything to Your Soil This Winter?

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Winter soil care and preparation can be pretty important, especially if you want to keep growing something or get the soil ready for spring. Cleaning any rotting plants and removing debris such as fallen leaves should be among your top priorities, but there are other ways to care for your soil that you might not have considered.   Depending on your local climate, you may already have considered planting various cover crops that are typically planted in the fall season. Rye and clover are good examples, and they can add extra nitrogen to your garden as a great soil treatment to prepare it for spring .   Regardless of whether or not you’ve planted anything, caring for your soil in the winter to ensure that the frost doesn’t affect it too much is one of your most important tasks. You can do that by covering it with sheet plastic or other coverings that will prevent winter rain from moistening it and prevent the frost from freezing it.   Winter is also a good opportuni...

Is It Important to Remove Leaves from My Lawn Before Winter?

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Many people believe that winter maintenance doesn’t consist of much when it comes to taking care of their lawns. After all, the grass doesn’t grow, and typically all you’d have to do is wait for the spring to come, when you can fertilize again and the cycle is renewed. This isn’t necessarily true, however, as lawn maintenance can be somewhat complicated, and there are very important tasks you need to perform before winter, too.   One of these is the removal of dead leaves. Even though some people prefer to keep the leaves where they are, the issue with keeping them there is that they can block aerated lawns from receiving enough air and water, and their slow decomposition means that they don’t contribute with too many nutrients while they’re there.   While removing the leaves entirely is an option, you can also choose to shred them into smaller pieces to facilitate the decomposition process and allow them to stay as a source of food for your lawn and a great organic lawn c...