Fall Lawn

(ARA) – Most people view spring and summer as the peak time for lawn care, but it’s fall that actually marks the beginning of your lawn’s growing season. There are simple but crucial steps to take now to promote a strong, beautiful lawn through next season and beyond.

Whether you have the best yard in the neighborhood or you haven’t had much success with your turf, you can improve and maintain the condition of your lawn if you take these three steps:

Build a foundation
The ideal conditions that come with fall — cool nights and warm soil — make it the best time to feed your lawn. The autumn window of opportunity to repair summer damage and achieve long-term lawn success is small, but it’s also a critical time to build and strengthen the root system. A product like Scotts Turf Builder Winterguard helps build strong, deep roots for a better foundation in your existing lawn. The better the root system, the more robust your lawn will be next year. A good fall feeding will keep your turf strong and green throughout the fall, winter and into spring.

Encourage new growth
Fall is also the best time to seed your lawn. The soil is still warm, but the air is cooler, meaning weeds have less opportunity to compete. Trees are shedding their leaves so grass receives more sun, and diseases that attack grass seedlings are less active in the fall. Overseeding with Scotts Turf Builder grass seed promotes (or helps create) a thick, lush lawn at the start of spring, making it difficult for airborne weed seeds to root in the soil. Seeding autumn bare spots will thicken the lawn and make it more resistant to future bare spots.

To reseed your bare spots, dig up bare areas, mix in compost, sow your seeds and cover with more compost. If the weather is dry, keep the seeded soil moist until new grass begins to grow.

Leave the rake behind
Don’t spend time raking and bagging leaves this season. Mulching leaves into dime-sized pieces by mowing over them and leaving them on the lawn provides valuable nutrients needed to produce thick, green turf in the spring. Mulching helps build a better foundation and returns much-needed organic matter back into the soil.

For more information on fall lawn care, visit Scotts.com.

Courtesy of ARAcontent

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Follow these four fast, simple fall lawn-care steps to promote a greener, better-looking, lush lawn next season:

1. Loosen up and Let it Breathe

Your lawn needs air to grow. As a rule of thumb, if you can’t see the grass due to leaf coverage, then it’s time to remove the lawn debris from the yard. Clearing leaves and clippings in the fall will help by removing the clutter that keeps air and sun from reaching the growing grass.

Aeration and dethatching loosen up the lawn, promote deep root growth, and reduce soil compaction that can keep grass from developing roots deep enough to absorb rainwater. Tackling these tasks in the fall can help ensure the health and beauty of your lawn come spring.

Fortunately, it’s easier than ever to avoid the hard work of traditional aeration and dethatching methods. LazyMan Liquid Gold, an all-natural, spray-on product, aerates and dethatches soil without mechanical means. It also conditions the soil at the same time.

LazyMan Liquid Gold uses polyelectrolytes, with their positive and negative electrical charges, to loosen up the soil. This allows air, water and nutrients to enter the root zone more easily. The product also contains microbes to feed on dead plant material that contains thatch as well as a soil conditioner made of kelp, humic acids and mycorrhizae (fungi that help plants absorb water and nutrients). Visit www.outsidepride.com to learn more about LazyMan Liquid Gold and other lawn care products.

2. Drive Out Drought Damage

Summer’s drought leaves many lawns across the country straw-colored and dormant. To help your lawn recover during and after drought, fertilize it every eight weeks with a slow-release fertilizer. A lawn that has the proper nutrients grows dense and deep and will green up faster. A regularly fed lawn will also be healthier and thicker than an unfed lawn. Couple feedings with infrequent, deep watering to promote deeper roots and offer a larger reservoir of water to draw from.

3. Continue to Feed the Need

Even lawns not stricken by drought need nourishment in the fall. Fall feeding can bring dramatic improvements as the lawn recovers from summer damage. Fertilizers help “winterize” the lawn, storing vital nutrients so that underground root development can continue until the ground freezes to ready the lawn for fuller growth next spring. Two feedings — timed around Labor Day and the end of October — are recommended for northern lawns, while southern lawns are best-fed four to six weeks before the first frost occurs.

4. Always Overseed

Once the lawn is aerated and dethatched, look for weak spots in it. Overseeding, the spreading of grass seed directly onto soil within an existing lawn, can improve a lawn’s appearance dramatically and eliminate the need for a total lawn renovation.

Early fall is the prime time to overseed because the warm soil promotes rapid seed growth and typically, fewer weed problems emerge during this time of the year.

The day before you overseed, be sure to mow the lawn slightly lower than normal and use fertilizer when you seed. For the next several weeks after overseeding, keep the top inch of soil moist to permit growth.

If you follow these simple steps and don’t neglect much-needed fall lawn care, you’ll be amazed at the difference in your lawn next spring. Fall lawn care is your window to a spectacular spring and summer lawn next season. So “loosen up” and lay the lawn care groundwork this fall.

For more information on fall lawn care, lawn care products and a wide variety of grass seed, please visit www.outsidepride.com.

Courtesy of ARAcontent

Related posts:

1. Revive Your Summer-stressed Lawn This Fall
2. The proper care and feeding of your fall lawn
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After your last cut of the year, a fall feeding provides the nutrients your lawn needs to withstand the harshest weather. Choose a wintercare fall lawn fertilizer for the best rate of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium (N-P-K).

“The fall application of fertilizer makes a big difference to the health of your lawn come spring,” says Kathy Russell, the lawns expert at Scotts Canada. “Regular feeding promotes healthy root growth and a healthy lawn is better able to crowd out weeds and resist other pests, so you’ll have less maintenance overall.”

Most people fertilize once or twice a year, but feeding your lawn four times a year is recommended by agronomists as optimal for most lawns. Choose a slow release, all-in-one particle fertilizer and make sure the fertilizer is applied on the lawn only by using a drop spreader, or one with an edgeguard technology that helps to prevent the fertilizer from landing on driveways and other hard surfaces.

If you prefer an alternative fertilizer for your pets or family, choose Scotts EcoSense Natural Lawn Fertilizer 10-1-5, one in a new line of alternative products that provides families with options to conventional lawn and garden care products. More lawn care tips are available online at www.scottscanada.ca or www.scottsecosense.ca.

“Your lawn makes an important contribution to the environment, cooling the temperature around your home, absorbing pollutants and providing oxygen, so it’s well worth taking care of,” adds Russell, noting real estate experts estimate quality landscaping can add 10 to 15 per cent to the value of your home.

Did You Know?

Lawns make an important contribution to the environment:

. Healthy turf traps pollutants and absorbs carbon dioxide, resulting in cleaner air.

. A 50 foot by 50 foot lawn provides enough oxygen every day for a family of four.

. Urban areas can be 4° to 7° Celsius warmer than rural areas. Healthy green spaces are dramatically cooler than asphalt, helping to cool the environment around your home, reducing energy costs related to air conditioning in the summer.

. Grass and ornamental trees and shrubs can absorb sound, reducing noise levels by 20 to 30 per cent.

Credit: www.newscanada.com

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Maintenance This Fall Will Make a Difference Next Spring

(ARA) – Many homeowners enthusiastically care for their lawns and gardens during the spring and summer months but tend to neglect them during the fall. After all, there’s no need to spend time maintaining the yard with winter on its way, right? Wrong.

In fact, fall is the ideal time to repair the harsh summer damage and prepare for the cold, damp days that lie ahead. The care given before its winter dormancy can significantly impact the way a lawn and garden will look during the next growing season.

According to Popular Mechanics, one of the most common mistakes people make while preparing their lawns for winter is allowing tree leaves and other debris to smother the grass and block the sun, which is essential to lawn growth. A heavy layer of leaves often becomes matted and can lead to winter or early spring diseases.

With homeowners today leading hectic, stressful lives, few people have the free time or patience to deal with the daunting task of raking. Or they simply have more trees than a lawn mower can handle for leaf control. A blower is a helpful addition to any homeowner’s lawn care arsenal, especially during times of fall restoration, and can be used for cleaning out flower beds and underneath hedges, as well as the general lawn. To maximize fall cleanup results using a leaf blower, experts suggest that homeowners:

Choose a model that offers easy starts — One of the most common consumer complaints regarding outdoor handheld power equipment is rough or non-existent starts. So look for models with an advanced starting system like the Craftsman 4-Cycle Blower/Vac with an Incredi-Pull Starting System with MAX FIRE Ignition or the Troy-Bilt Backpack Blower with a compression release system. With the adaptation of 4-cycle technology blower/vacs start easier than their 2-cycle counterparts.

Check local noise and emissions ordinances — Because most standard, 2-cycle leaf blowers typically create significant noise and emissions, some communities have banned blowers or limited sound and emission levels. With 4-cycle engines, however, users can cut emissions in half and drastically reduce noise — typically down to 75 to 79 decibels as opposed to a 2-cycle engine’s 95 or higher decibel level (comparable to a motorcycle).

Protect plants and mulch with a variable-speed blower — The true performance feature to look for in a blower is the cubic feet per minute (cfm) — the measure of how much air is applied and the most important factor in moving leaves or yard debris.

Look for vibration-dampening features — Users of 2-cycle equipment may be familiar with the uncomfortable vibration experienced when using a typical leaf blower. But with 4-cycle engines, vibration is suppressed for increased control and comfort.

Save time by performing two jobs with one tool — For those interested in turning fallen leaves into mulch, experts recommend a blower/vac with a mulching ratio of at least 3:1. With a one-bushel vacuum bag capacity, the Craftsman automatically mulches debris at a 10:1 reduction ratio.

Those who breathe a sigh of relief from the myth that lawn care can subside in the fall should consider how restoring it now will save work in the spring. And homeowners will find that making an investment in 4-cycle equipment to tackle seasonal chores will not only be rewarding next spring, but also while performing tasks in the coming months.

For more information on the benefits of 4-cycle handheld equipment for fall cleanup, please visit www.mtdproducts.com.

Courtesy of ARAcontent

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