The cold and rainy season is here in the Pacific Northwest. Now is the time to prepare your lawn for winter. These are the steps that you should be following.
- Mow your lawn at regular height until the growth stops. The growth slowdown has already occurred for many lawns.
- Apply lime and a winter type fertilizer. This will slowly be absorbed by the grass roots and prepare your lawn for spring growth.
- Winterize lawn equipment by changing the oil and emptying the fuel tank. Place into storage.
- Remove leaves: Keep your lawn free of leaves so they don’t smother it over the winter.
Then you are ready to enjoy a warm fire and a good book as you wait for the coming of spring.
Fall is here and winter will be soon. Winter is the season when you spend the least amount of time thinking about your lawn. There are steps you need to take in late fall to make sure your lawn is vibrant and healthy for next spring.
Leaf clean-up: Carefully remove the blanket of leaves that will fall in the next 2 months. A covering of leaves if left over the winter will smother and severely weaken your lawn. Remove any objects or equipment that can block sunlight over the coming long rainy season.
Final Fertilization: In late fall (usually November in the Pacific Northwest) feed your lawn with a good winter type fertilizer. Much like many animals that will bulk up for the winter, lawns will accumulate the fertilizer in its roots to make ready for a spring emergence.
When spring does come, your lawn will emerge from its winter slumber with healthy and lush new growth.
Tips from Far West Turf Farm and Nursery serving Vancouver, WA and Portland, Oregon. Your Vancouver, WA turf farm.
In the Portland and Vancouver WA areas lawns do not go completely dormant over the winter. Fall is the best time to prepare your lawn for the coming spring with a fall winter fertilizer and a treatment of lime.
Fertilize your lawn with a slow release Nitrogen product usually sold as a winterizer or Fall-Winter fertilizer. This would typically be a 18-4-12 fertilizer with slow release Nitrogen. . This way the nitrogen is available for the coming spring as your lawn wakes up and produces a green healthy lawn quicker.
The fall is also a great time to apply lime to the lawn to control acidity. A lime treatment will control the soil pH (acidity) and help the grass roots absorb the fertilizer.
Summer is winding down and we are moving in to a cooler fall season. The ground is still warm so fall is the perfect time for lawn maintenance and preparing for the coming winter.
Lawn Length: The cooler temperatures and warm soil temperature encourages grass growth. Don’t let your grass get too long before mowing. You should plan on only cutting about 1/3 of the grass blade in a single mowing. Tip: increase your mowing height ½”-1” during periods of high growth.
Dethatch: Having a thin layer of dead matted grass (thatch) of up to ½ inch is normal. Remove this layer by raking or power raking to encourage growth by allowing air, water and fertilizer to reach the roots. More on dethatching
Aeration: Over time your lawn area can be compacted with thin or bare spots. Aeration punches small holes in the turf that encourages lawn growth. Fall is the best time to do aeration. More on aeration and overseeding
Lawn Replacement: If you have problem areas and you have addressed them with soil testing, look at replacing problem areas or your entire lawn area. Fall is an ideal time to replace a damaged lawn. You can purchase sod or reseed your lawn. More on seed vs. sod
Dethatching is the removal of the excess matted dead grass that builds up over time. This can be done manually with a rake or with a power machine. You should dethatch a lawn when the thatch layer is more than ½ inch thick.
Dethatching encourages growth by allowing air, water and fertilizer to reach the roots.
The best time to dethatch a cool season lawn is from late August through early October. You want to do this while your lawn is still growing vigorously and while there is time for it to recover before going dormant for the winter.
Fall is an ideal time because weed seeds are not germinating. Your lawn then has time to thicken up before weed seeds can become a problem.
Early spring is another good time to dethatch before the lawn growth has really begun and it is sometimes easier to get at the thatch.
Brought to you by your Portland sod company, Far West Turf Farm and Nursery
Want to create a distinctive look to your lawn? You can use this method to add stripes while you mow to create a distinctive pattern like you see on the professional baseball fields on TV. Lawn striping is easy and doesn’t have to cost a lot.
The video below shows how you can turn your lawn mower into a lawn striper for around $10.You can also purchase a lawn striping system that can easily be attached to most walk behind mowers. Toro puts out a quality lawn striper that does an excellent job.
When it come to putting in your new lawn, use your local Portland sod farm, Far West Turf Farm and Nursery located near Vancouver, WA. Remember, we deliver.
This includes fertilizing too much, too often or at the wrong time. It can also mean using the wrong fertilizer such as one too high in Nitrogen. Lawns get their nutrition directly from the soil as a byproduct of soil organisms or added as a fertilizer. Healthy soil is full of organisms that work together with your grass benefiting each other.
Over fertilizing can either kill the grass directly or kill or injure your soils natural occurring organisms.
What do the 3 sets of numbers mean on a bag of fertilizer? When you see numbers such as 10-10-10, these three numbers refer to the percentages of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium components in the fertilizer. It is important to use a balanced fertilizer that provides relatively equal amounts of Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium.
Nitrogen (N) is responsible for rich, lush growth and a healthy, dark, green color.
Phosphorus (P): is important in the development of roots and speeds plant maturity.
Potassium (K): helps promote strong roots and is involved in maintaining a proper water balance within the plant. It also aids in disease resistance.
Planning a new lawn? See your Vancouver, WA sod farm, Far West Turf Farm and Nursery.
Do you have dead spots in your lawn from pet damage? You can use pieces of sod to quickly and easily restore your lawn to a picture perfect condition. The repair will take about 5 minutes and only requires a fresh piece of sod and a hand shovel.
Obtain the sod from your local sod farm such as Far West Turf Farm and Nursery near Vancouver, WA. Sod should be of the same type as the rest of your lawn.
- Lay a piece of fresh sod over the damaged area. Piece should be minimum 18″ x 18″
- Cut around the edge of the sod with your shovel
- Remove the cut-out damaged area to a depth of 1 “
- Lay in the new piece of sod.
- Water the new sod and keep moist until well rooted (3-6 weeks)
Dandelions, crabgrass and even foreign grasses are the enemy that is always present waiting to infiltrate your lawn and take over. Weapons include chemical weed killers, weed and feed combo applications and manual weeding.
A healthy thick lawn is your best defense against weeds. Prevention and lawn care best practices are the best way to keep out weeds.
- Mowing regularly to no more than 2-3 inches is by itself a good method of weed control.
- Water and Fertilize regularly, but with moderation.
- Mechanical aeration: Aerate and over seed your lawn annually to promote a thick health lawn.
Have weeds already taken over? Perhaps it is time to replace your weedy lawn with a new sod lawn using premium sod from your Portland sod farm, Far West turf Farm and Nursery.
If your lawn looks like a patchwork of different colors of green, it probably is a mixture of types or varieties of grasses. If you look closely you will notice they grow at different rates and the leaf shape will be different between the lighter and darker patches of color. The best method of controlling weeds in a lawn is to maintain a dense and vigorously growing turf cover.
If the patches are a broad-leaf weed such as Dandelion or crab grass, then a selective herbicide can work. You can also apply Roundup and kill the crab grass and then reseed these areas.
For mixed types of lawn grasses you can aerate and over seed your lawn.It can be tough to selectively kill mixed varieties of lawn grasses. If they are in isolated in small patches, then kill with Roundup and reseed.
If you lawn is too bad, then remove the lawn with a sod cutter and replace your lawn with premium sod from your local sod farm like Far West Turf and Nursery. Sod for sale in Vancouver WA.
