5 Tips To Get Your Lawn Ready For Fall

Ready-for-fall

We Minnesotans fall into one of two camps: we either enter the fall season rejoicing that we’re one day closer to winter or we ignore the changing leaves and wear our flip flops until the first snowflake appears. No matter which type of person you are, there is a good chance you aren’t thinking about your lawn as much as you were a couple months ago, but the cooler weather of autumn makes it an ideal time to prepare for next spring.

Your grass might be growing more slowly, but that doesn’t mean it won’t benefit from a little extra care. During the autumn, grass absorbs energy, moisture, and nutrients to prepare for a long, dormant winter. Give your lawn a little love now, and you’ll be able to see the difference in the spring.

1. Keep mowing

It might be tempting to stop mowing your lawn, but keeping your grass short will allow more sunlight to reach the crown of the grass and will decrease the amount of leaf that will turn brown during the winter. Set your mower to its lowest setting for the last two cuttings of the year, always taking care to never cut more than one-third of the grass blade at a time.

2. Aerate your soil

Aerating your soil lets oxygen, water, and fertilizer reach your grass’s roots. Fall is a great time to aerate and most hardware stores have gas-powered lawn aerators for rent that will remove small plugs of dirt and drills holes into the dirt.

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3. Rake the leaves

Raking leaves can be a big job, but it’s an important one to get taken care of as soon as possible. Putting it off will only make the leaves more likely to get wet and stuck together and much more difficult to rake. Another option is to use a lawnmower with a collection bag or a vacuum system to remove the leaves. No matter which option you choose, be sure to get your leaves picked up before they become a wet, suffocating mess.

4. Apply fertilizer

Fall is the best time of year to apply fertilizer. Grass leaves might be growing more slowly, but the roots and rhizomes (the horizontal plant stem that lies beneath the surface) are still active. Adding fertilizer in the fall gives grass roots the nutrients they need to grow deep now and start out healthy in the spring.

5. Fill bald spots

The easiest way to fill any bald spots in your lawn is to use an all-in-one lawn repair mixture sold at most garden shop and home centers. Typically these ready-made mixes contain grass seed, quick-starter lawn fertilizer, and organic mulch. Before spreading the seed, use a rake to loosen the soil. Then spread a thick layer of the mixture over the area, water thoroughly, and continue watering every other day for two weeks.

Edina Landscape Dream Come True for This Family

 

Edina Landscaping ProjectReady to take your landscaping to the next level? Call 612-483-GOAT to get started! We’ve been serving the Twin Cities for well over a decade. Here’s footage of one of our favorite projects… #landscaping #MN #TwinCities

Posted by Great Goats Landscaping on Friday, September 11, 2015

 

A few years ago, a family in Edina was looking to upgrade their landscape. They had just finished a home addition and wanted a beautiful front yard to complement the work they had done. We worked with the homeowners to create a design to give them exactly what they were looking for – beauty and privacy with a golf course quality lawn.

edina-frontTo give them the type of lawn the family wanted, the Great Goats team stripped out the old lawn and meticulously graded the exposed dirt. Then we installed lush Minnesota grown sod. A curved border separated the lawn from the landscaped areas and gentle berms were added to give the family a rolling contour instead of the typical flat front yard.

We also landscaped the front entry and the foundation of the home and added an L-shaped garden with pine and birch trees, a flowering tree and lots of blooming shrubs and perennials. The final effect was a colorful screen that gave a sense of privacy from the street traffic in front of the home.

Edina-poolside Two years later, the Great Goats team found themselves back at the same address. The family had recently build a new wooden deck off the second story, added a concrete deck around their swimming pool, and enclosed the back yard with a new fence. Once again the family’s main concern was privacy. The open fields that surrounded their backyard were slated for development and keeping a sense of peace and seclusion was a high priority.

We planted evergreen and birch trees along the fence to create a natural screen. We also carried over the contoured feel of the front yard by installing gentle berms and a curved border along the planting beds.  Flowering patio trees, blooming shrubs, perennials and ornamental grasses were planted to create natural and colorful points of interest around the yard.edina-landscape

Throughout the property, accent borders were added to enhance the naturalistic feel that the homeowners wanted.

Since first meeting the family, Great Goats has enjoyed maintaining and improving the landscaping of their property. We love taking a project from the very beginning and improving the site over multiple years to help homeowners create a yard that they truly love. We value our ongoing relationship with this family and have been thrilled to receive several referrals based on our work.

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