How to Protect Your Lawn in the Fall

Ron had always assumed that when fall came, it meant his lawn was preparing for a long winter's nap. After mowing for the last time, Ron figured there was nothing more to do. On a whim he decided to check it out with a lawn and garden expert with Scott's and found out he had a lot to learn.

In the fall, your grass may look like it's snoozing but when you "get to the root of things" you'll discover that there is a lot going on beneath the surface. A lot of people forget about their lawn this time of year, but this is the time to winterize a lawn.

If you have a few weeds growing in your lawn, this is the perfect time of the year to take care of those too. If you do have weeds, use a winterizer with weed control and then use regular winterizer for the other parts of the lawn where you don't have any weeds. It doesn't hurt to use the weed control on your whole lawn, but it is just not necessary where there aren't any weeds.

Winterizer is actually a winter lawn food. If you feed your lawn now you will help the grass not only now but also next spring.

Important things that you can't see are happening to roots this time of the year. In the fall the roots are preparing a food reserve to last through the winter. If you feed the lawn now, while Mother Nature is turning out all those new roots, then they will have even more root growth, and will stockpile nutrients for a healthier and stronger lawn next year.

After raking or blowing all the leaves from the lawn, apply the winterizer to the lawn with a rotary spreader. If you have weeds, apply winterizer (with weed killer) onto moist foliage so that the particles stick to the weeds, get absorbed down into the root and kill it, root system and all. You should pick a day when you're going to get at least two or three days of 50 to 60 degree weather. If you're in a part of the country where it's really cold then November might be too late to put down the winterizer.

Read the instructions on the fertilizer bag and find the spreader rate and dial in the correct setting. Swing the edge guard into position and fertilize the perimeter of the yard first. The edge guard prevents fertilizer from getting onto the pavement and into flowerbeds.

Once the edges are finished, make parallel passes across the lawn moving down about five feet after each pass.

With the proper steps taken now, your lawn should go into the winter looking great and then come back even stronger and more lush in the spring.