(ARA) - Lawn-loving homeowners know it takes a lot of care to keep their lawns in tiptop condition during the summer, keeping them nicely trimmed and watered on a regular basis.
“ Beautiful lawns are made in the fall. ”
But when autumn leaves start to fall, these same homeowners' thoughts turn to other things. That's a big mistake, according to lawn specialists, because how you care for your lawn in autumn determines to a great extent its health in the upcoming year.
You can't just concentrate on raking leaves and planting mums. You have to take specific steps to ensure your lawn's health over the winter and into next spring.
According to garden editor Justin W. Hancock of Garden, Deck & Landscape magazine, "The most important thing to understand about fall lawn care is that you are taking steps to ensure healthy crowns and roots," says Hancock.
"Grass stores up nutrients and carbohydrates for the winter so how you treat your grass at the end of the season plays a big role in how well it will fair over the harsh winter months and into next spring," he adds.
Lawns work hard in the fall to prepare for the next 12 months, developing root systems that enable them to be drought resistant and stress tolerant in the upcoming year. This makes it a perfect time to make improvements to your lawn since it is actively growing but not strained by the heat.
These three essential and easy fall lawn care tasks will help guarantee great looking grass next spring:
1. Let your lawn breathe. The most important thing you can do this fall to reduce stress and ensure your lawn's health and vigor is to aerate. Aeration is the baseline for all fall lawn care processes. Opening up the root system provides a direct path for air, water and nutrients to reach the grass roots, and this encourages more roots to take hold and to grow deeper into the soil.
Until very recently, aeration has always been considered time consuming, expensive, messy and labor intensive, which explains why many of us just don't do it. But skipping the aeration process can result in lack luster lawns in the springtime.
This fall, take advantage of a "ground breaking" solution that allows you to get the job done without any of the stress, the mess or the hard work! All you need is a hose end sprayer and LazyMan Liquid Soil Aerator. Just spray on Lazyman and 100 percent or your soil will be treated in no time without the unsightly mess a core-aerator leaves behind.
LazyMan Liquid Aeration literally is "ground breaking", it helps reduce crusting, loosens up hard clay soils, aggregates sandy soil and allows water and oxygen to better reach plant roots by reducing the surface tension between the water and the soil. It even increases earthworm population, nature's aerator, in the soil.
LazyMan is a uniquely formulated, high grade soil penetrate which also adds humic acids to depleted soil. Over the winter, humic acids aid the soil in recovering from any residual pesticide, herbicide or other toxins that may be in the soil.
2. Overseed bare, thinning spots. Now that your lawn has been properly aerated, it's time to overseed to fill in weak spots and compensate for thinning growth. The ideal time for planting grass seed to either establish a new lawn or renovate a poor quality one is the fall. Soil moisture and temperature conditions are just right for lawn seeds to germinate and establish roots, there's also less competition from weed growth.
Top quality grass seed will germinate better and be more disease resistant over time. To find the ideal seed for your lawn, visit http://www.lazymangardener.com/
3. Feed a hungy lawn. The best time of the year to fertilize your lawn is early fall. Your lawn has passed through the stressful summer months and needs food to rebuild itself. During the fall season there is less competition from weeds, insects and diseases.
Look for a good organic lawn food or a top quality lawn fertilizers that contain slow-release or controlled-release nitrogen. These forms stimulate uniform growth over a period of time and are less likely to burn the grass.
By following these simple lawn care practices, you can sleep easily knowing that when your lawn awakens from its winter slumber it will be healthy and ready for spring.
You can't trust every old saying, but here's one you can trust and your yard can benefit from "Beautiful lawns are made in the fall." So this fall get your grass in great shape for winter and super-charged for next spring.
For more information on the complete line of LazyMan products, visit http://www.lazymangardener.com/ From serious do-it yourself landscapers to the novice homeowner, you'll find a wide variety of garden products that are easy to use and provide substantial, proven results.
Courtesy of ARA Content
