Your lawn is one of the most important facets of your home. It’s a great introduction to your house, a nice place for the kids to play in good weather, and one easy home relaxation step after a tough day. Keeping your lawn of a high quality, however, is not an easy feat. One way to keep your lawn looking as it should is to take the easy precaution of winterizing it in areas where the cold temperature throughout at least part of the year will harm the grass and soil.

Once you’ve decided to winterize your lawn, you must first decide whether or not you feel competent in the winterization process. While it is not a terribly difficult one, it does involve the uses of lawn chemicals. As a result, if you don’t feel confident in your ability to follow all of the steps as they are printed here, hiring a professional to complete this process for you is probably a good idea.

If you have decided to winterize your own lawn, the first step in the process is to raise the cutting level of your mower by one inch. This step should, ideally, be taken the last month that you give your lawn a regular mowing. In some areas of the country, this occurs at the end of summer. In other areas of the country, it doesn’t happen until mid-October or so. Changing the height of the mower, though, isn’t the only step to this process that involves mowing. You should also consider mowing in a different direction for the entire last month of the mowing season. It will help to prepare your grass for the steps ahead. If you want to winterize your lawn, but you’ve already missed this step, don’t fret. Taking these two steps on your last mow of the season will help some.

Once you’re done mowing for the year, you are ready to apply one final fertilizer application before the grass dies back for the year. This time, though, you may have to switch fertilizer products. Take a close look at the products available to you at the local lawn and garden store. Several companies make a winterizer fertilizer, and if you read the ingredients carefully, you will find that the primary ingredient in this type of fertilizer is nitrogen. If you apply a high dose of nitrogen at the very end of the season, it will help your roots to grow. If you intend to feed your lawn over the course of the winter, and it may actually help to encourage lush growth during the following spring and summer, be sure that you stop using the nitrogen fertilizer after the last feed.

Once the summer growing season is over, the grasses that feed on nitrogen die back. As a result, using a phosphorus or potassium based formula will best help your lawn to deal with the winter weather. If you intend to continually feed your lawn with one of these fertilizers, you need a slow release formula, as that is exactly what your lawn needs during this time of the year. Composting your lawn just before the snow begins to pile up isn’t a bad idea either, but not wholly necessary for the perfect lawn you desire.

As fall begins to hit your lawn, and the leaves from the trees start to pile up, be sure to rake on a regular basis. If you allow the leaves to pile up in one spot, it can seriously damage your spring and summer lawn growth; so getting the leaves off of your lawn as they fall is essential to the winterizing process.

Be sure to check all areas of your lawn for weed and insect problems. If you can kill the weeds and carefully reseed the area in the fall, the chances are much less likely that you will have problems with them during the spring and summer growing seasons. Remember that weeds are a haven for some very bad insects, so getting rid of them is a great idea.

The decision to winterize your lawn can be a difficult one, but thoughts of lush, green full grass once winter’s snow’s melt isn’t really a bad one, and that thought alone may help to convince you that winterizing is a great idea.

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