After the frigid winter months, your lawn may be struggling to come back. Reviving a lawn after the winter requires patience and persistence. Once you attain that lush and healthy lawn, all the patience and persistence pays off. Here are five tips to reviving your lawn this spring.
Aerate
One of the best ways to revive your lawn after the winter is with aeration. After a year of foot traffic and thatch build up, your lawn may be suffering from soil compaction. Compacted soil keeps water and nutrients from being absorbed, causing pooling water and brown patches of grass. Aeration is a technique used to pulls plugs of soils out of your lawn. This relieves your lawn of soil compaction and allows for intake of nutrients and water.
Clean Up the Yard
The next way to revive your lawn is to clean it up. After the last of the snow melts away, start by using a leaf blower to get all of the loose leaves and other matter into a pile. From there, use a hand rake to collect any leaves, sticks, branches, or other lawn debris. Use a metal-tined rake, or better yet, a dethatcher, to get down to the thatch, giving your lawn a thorough cleaning. Not only will cleaning up your boost the health and vitality of your grass, it will also boost your curb appeal if you’re putting your home on the market.
Fix the Dead Spots
After the snow melts, check your property for any dead or dying patches of grass. Rake these areas with a metal-tined rake to remove the dead grass and loosen up the soil. Next you will need to choose grass seed that matches the grass in your yard. Lay the seeds down in your loosened soil and cover with hay. Water regularly for a few weeks until the grass has established itself.
Fertilize
If your lawn is looking a little grim after the winter then it may be time to fertilize. Choose a slow release fertilizer to give your lawn the nutrients it needs over time. As one of the more important seasonal lawn care tips, this will keep your lawn healthy through the heavy growing season. It’s also best to choose a fertilizer that’s high in nitrogen than phosphorus and potassium to boost growth rate. Wait for the soil to thaw out before applying any fertilizer.
Keep the Weeds at Bay
If you want to keep your lawn healthy and vibrant all year long then you will want to keep the weeds away. Seeds from common weeds lie dormant in your lawn until the temperatures rise and the soil thaws. Use a pre-emergent weed control before these seeds germinate to keep them from sprouting. This will keep competition away and allow your grass to grow in healthy and green all spring.
Jacob Palmer is a gardening and landscape design writer. When mowing lawns on his street as a child, he discovered a lifelong passion for landscape design. He now has three children who can all be found helping him most weekends with his next big garden project.
