There is more to lawn maintenance than just knowing when to fertilize or mow your lawn. A lawn treatment schedule that changes with the seasons is key to a healthy lawn. After a year of damage to your lawn, it’s important to make a plan for treatment.   A lawn treatment schedule will vary depending on how it was damaged and where you live. Foot traffic, poor drainage, pests, and thatch can cause serious damage. Additionally, where you live has a large impact on what your lawn needs. Different altitudes, temperatures, and humidity will determine what treatments will be best for your lawn. Read on for a basic lawn treatment schedule to help you bring your lawn back stronger, and keep it strong.

Spring Lawn Maintenance

Lawn care seems to start for most people in the early spring when the grass starts to look green again. Get a good start on yard maintenance in the spring with these lawn maintenance tips: 

 

Prepare your lawnmower. Start the season right by sharpening your mower blades and making sure everything is working and ready when you want to cut your grass. 

• Clean your lawn. Use your rake to remove dead grass and any other debris in your yard. This process is called “dethatching” and prepares your yard for the necessary lawn treatment.
• Test your soil. Spring is the best time to test how healthy your soil is by measuring the nutrients and pH. To properly create a lawn treatment schedule, you’ll need to know exactly what your lawn needs to make it as healthy as possible.
• Aerate your lawn. One of the spring staples of yard maintenance is to aerate. For cool-season grasses, the best time for aeration is the early spring. For warm-season grasses, the best time to aerate is in the late spring.
• Begin mowing high. As you start mowing your lawn for the season, make sure you mow on the highest setting for your type of grass. Mowing high keeps your grass slightly longer, which helps the grass stay healthier and develop stronger root systems.
• Fertilize your lawn. Our lawn treatment schedule suggests the first time to fertilize is in late spring. Feeding your lawn strengthens the grass and can prevent future weed growth. Lawn Doctor offers fertilization plans that will take care of the lawn treatments for you and ease your lawn maintenance stress. 
• Prepare for weeds, You can use special herbicides called pre-emergents to help prevent weeds from growing in your lawn. This can be done around the time the soil in your yard reaches 58 degrees Fahrenheit.

 

Summer Lawn Maintenance

Summer is the peak of lawn maintenance. Here are lawn maintenance tips for the summer: 

 

• Water the correct amount. Your lawn needs an inch of water each week. If you live in an area where you get that much rain each week, you don’t need to worry about irrigating. If you live in a drier area, make sure your sprinklers are watering your lawn enough. Also try to water between 6am and 10am to minimize evaporation. It’s also better to soak your lawn one day a week than to water a little each day. 

• Fertilize your lawn. For your lawn treatment schedule, the next time to fertilize is 6 to 8 weeks after the initial lawn treatment.

• Treat for grubs. If you’ve had a grub problem before or your neighbor is having a problem, make sure you’re treating for grubs at the right time. Time your lawn treatment for early summer right before the eggs hatch. 

 

Fall Lawn Maintenance

Fall is for more than just clean-up lawn maintenance. It’s time to prepare your grass and soil for next year. 

 

• Fertilize your lawn one more time. Lawn maintenance and fertilizing don’t end in the summer. For cool-season grasses, fertilize twice in the fall to take advantage of the great growing conditions. Fertilize once around the beginning of September and then once more 6 to 8 weeks later. For warm-season grasses, only fertilize once. 

• Reseed if necessary. If the summer heat has thinned your grass, mid-fall is the perfect time to reseed those thin areas. 

• Finish mowing. Continue mowing right up until your grass becomes dormant. At the end of the season, it doesn’t matter as much if you mow high, so you can cut low to prevent having to mow the length in the spring. 

 

Winter Lawn Maintenance

Some people forget winter in their lawn treatment schedule because the grass is dormant. Even though you won’t need to mow or water, there are a couple of lawn maintenance strategies to help keep your yard healthy:

 

• Take care of dormant grass. Take care of dormant grass. Even in the winter, it’s important to care for your lawn. Try to limit traffic on your lawn, and don’t park or store anything on your grass. Also, make sure that you’re not using damaging ice melter. Sodium chloride can damage the roots of your grass, so try to find ice melt with calcium chloride instead.
• Plan for next season. Start the next season right by preparing your individual lawn treatment schedule and coming up with solutions for last year’s challenges.

 

If you need more help protecting your lawn year-round, check out our services!