As the winter season approaches each year, homeowners may find themselves breathing a frosty sigh of relief – they can take a break from doing yard work for a few months now, right?

 While it is true that your lawn requires less work in the winter than it does the other months of the year, that does not mean you should just forget about it completely for a couple of months. There are several things you should do to prepare your lawn for the upcoming winter season each year. Let’s take a moment to look at a couple of these things so your lawn is able to survive the cold and come back stronger and more beautiful.

To begin preparing your lawn for the winter season, you should begin by aerating it before the grass goes into its schedule hibernation period. This will give it one last chance to breathe and air out before the frost hits it, as well as getting rid of any compaction that was able to accumulate during the earlier months of the year.

The next step you should take after initially aerating your lawn is to give your lawn one last round of fertilizer before the cold really has a chance to put stress on it. This is an important step in helping your lawn survive the winter, as it will give it a whole host of nutrients to feed on as it gets colder outside. If you do not fertilize your lawn before it gets cold out, you risk a significant portion of your lawn dying over the winter months.

By giving the lawn nutrients, it allows the grass to store them before it stops growing and hibernates. Once the spring season begins, your grass will be able to use the nutrients that it stored over the winter and get a jump start on growing nice and strong once again.

 In addition, diseases, pests, and weeds are much less likely to try and take up residence on your lawn if it is healthy and well protected.

It is important that you remove all of the debris, especially fallen leaves, from your lawn before the winter season starts and the cold weather makes it much tougher to complete this kind of work. The reason for this is that an overabundance of leaves on your lawn could prevent it from being able to breathe during the cold period, essentially suffocating it for months on end. In addition, if the leaves are wet and thick, they can easily invite mold and other types of disease onto your lawn.

 If the leaves are small enough, you can simply get rid of them by using a leaf mulcher and then recycling them back onto your lawn to help it grow. However, if they are too large to recycle into mulch, then you will simply have to get rid of them and put them in the trash.

 Removing all of your lawn furniture during this time of year is a good idea as well. No one will be using it, and if you do leave it outside, you will likely be suffocating the parts of the lawn that it is on, leaving unsightly dead patches in your lawn.

During the winter months, if you do not have one already, it may be a good idea to put up a small lawn fence to make sure that the amount of traffic on the lawn is minimized during this time of year.

 People have a tendency to use the same foot paths over and over again, and when your grass has to deal with both this added foot traffic and the cold, it weakens it significantly. Avoid the problem altogether by simply keeping people off of your lawn until it no longer has the cold to contend with.

To ensure that your lawn does not become patchy or otherwise damaged during this time of year, use pet safe ice melt tablets to keep patches of ice from forming anywhere on the lawn. If these do form, they can make the grass look spotty and unpleasant, and this is damage that will inevitably have to be repaired at a later date.

One of the most important aspects of winter lawn care is to make a plan and then actually stick with it. Give yourself plenty of time to prepare an action plan and purchase supplies instead of trying to do everything at the last minute.

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