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Spring Lawn Care
Do take your time getting onto your lawn this spring.
Do Not Walk
Do not walk on the lawn when it is still spongy and wet.
Doing so will create more damage than any work you do will create a benefit. The footprints you leave, the compression you cause in the grass root zone, is something that will take a month or more to naturally fix.
Staying off the lawn for a week or two to allow it to naturally dry out is time well spent.
Pent Up Demand
If you have to do something in the face of a pent up demand for spring lawn care activities, change the oil in the mower and sharpen or replace the blades. This way, when you have to mow, youll be doing it with a machine ready for summers long haul.
Raking
Once the lawn does dry out, the single best thing you can do is give it a good raking. Raking with an old-fashioned hard tine rake removes winter debris and opens up the air spaces between grass plants allowing air to penetrate down into the crown to combat developing fungus problems. Raking also removes any dead or dying grass plants and this too is good for the health of the lawn. Think of raking as giving your lawn a good spring housecleaning.
Fertilize Later
Dont bother fertilizing your lawn until the grass is growing well and strongly. The plants should have enough strength in the roots to get started and feeding before the root systems are growing strongly is a waste of fertilizer and money.
The plant food will dissolve and run away in the spring rains if applied too early. In my zone 4 garden, the end of May is a good time to feed your lawn.
In the early spring, the lawn only requires one half pound of nitrogen per thousand square feet. Figure out how to set your spreader so it only puts this much on. More will make the grass grow faster (youll have to mow more often) and fatter (more attractive to insects to eat) and more susceptible to diseases.
The lawn looks better in the short term with more nitrogen but overfeeding causes problems in the long run.
Dandelions
Do control dandelions and crab grass when the forsythia are in bloom. The blooms on this shrub spring into bloom when the time is right for crab grass and dandelions to germinate. Applying a control agent that uses corn gluten is a very effective and environmentally sound system of stopping dandelion and crab grass germination.
Corn gluten will not kill existing dandelion plants but it will prevent new ones from germinating. Use an old fashioned dandelion fork to pull out the offending weeds. Using chemicals to control crab grass is a bit of overkill when a naturally occurring product and benign product does the same thing.
Note that applying a grab grass control product at the wrong time means that the crab grass will not be controlled and it is a waste of time and money to apply. This rule applies equally to both organic and chemical products for crab grass control.
Mow High
One of the best things you can do in your spring lawn care to stop dandelions is to mow your lawns quite high. Set the mower setting on its highest setting and do not take it off for the entire season. Longer grass blades produce healthier and bigger grass plants and these larger plants help shade out dandelion plants and their tender seedlings.
Along with this corn gluten, spread a large bale of peat and two bags of compost onto each 1000 square feet of lawn. This topdressing and organic matter will help each individual grass plant meet its growth potential.
It is interesting to understand that you are not growing a lawn. You are really growing thousands of individual grass plants.
Grow the plants properly and the look of the lawn will take care of itself.
And that's the basics of a good spring lawn care program.
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