The Complete Lawn Care Schedule: Your Guide to Year-Round Lawn Care Success

How Do I Keep My Grass Green Year-Round?

The key to keeping your grass lush and green throughout the growing season is a consistent maintenance routine. Doing the right things at the right time of year will ensure that your lawn gets the nutrients it needs while preventing many problems before they begin.

Here’s how to level up your lawn care routine this year for an unbelievable lawn that’s the envy of the neighborhood.

Spring Lawn Care Schedule

Prepare Your Equipment for the Season

Early spring is the best time to check your lawn equipment and tools to be sure they are ready to go when you need them. If you didn’t perform regular maintenance on your mower last fall, now is a good time to service your mower, so it’s in tip-top shape for the season ahead. If you’re using battery-powered lawn equipment, make sure the batteries are fully charged.

Check your leaf blower, trimmers, and other equipment. Do they start properly? Are they in good working order?

Finally, pull out shovels, rakes, pruning shears, and other gardening tools. Is everything in good shape, or is it time to upgrade?

Perform Lawn Cleanup Tasks

Now that your tools are in order, it’s time to get a jump on yard cleanup. Start by removing dead grass, leaves, twigs, branches, and other debris left over from winter. Clearing your lawn will let your grass breathe and soak up the stronger spring sunshine to promote growth.

Regular Lawn Issues? Test Your Soil!

If you’ve had issues with your lawn in the past, knowing the composition and pH levels of your soil can help you choose fertilizers to correct the problems. Spring is the perfect time to collect soil samples for testing. You can opt to send your samples to a university extension service lab or simply test the pH of your soil with a kit available at most garden supply stores.

Fertilize Your Lawn

Whether you decided to test your soil or not, spring is a great time to fertilize your lawn to replenish key nutrients. If you did choose to test your soil, the results will be a great indicator of what you need to add to your soil for better results this year.

Pay the most attention to pH levels and consult with a garden professional to determine the optimum pH for your grass type. You can raise the pH level of your soil by adding lime. If your pH level is too high, adding sulfur will help to lower the pH for optimum growth.

Mow Only As Needed

While you may be anxious to fire up your mower for the first time, it’s important to let the grass grow a bit at the start of spring. Longer grass absorbs more sunlight, giving your lawn more food. Longer grass also develops deeper roots, giving it the best chance to find much-needed water during a summer drought.

When you do cut your grass the first time, raise the mower to its highest level, so you aren’t cutting more than a third of each blade of grass.

Summer Lawn Care Schedule

Invest in Pest Control

Early summer is the perfect time to handle pest and weed control tasks. The most common grass pests are grubs, the small larvae that eventually become Japanese beetles. Left unchecked, grubs can create bare patches in your lawn by consuming the grass roots underneath.

The best time to take control of grubs is in late spring or early summer, right before or just after grubs hatch. Most garden stores sell easy-to-apply insecticides formulated to kill grubs at their source.

Water

Grass that gets at least an inch of water per week will stay green and healthy. If rainfall is sparse, watering your grass is recommended. Early morning—between 6am and 10am—is the best time to water your lawn to minimize evaporation.

Maintain a Mowing Routine

For best results, establish a regular mowing routine and keep your mower blade sharp. It’s better to mow a little grass each week than to let your grass grow too tall and cut several inches off at one time. Consistent mowing with a sharp blade ensures a clean cut, which helps cut down on moisture loss and prevents disease.

Fall Lawn Care Schedule

Fill in Bare Spots and Overseed Your Lawn

After the heat of summer has passed, you may observe bare spots or thinning areas in your lawn where the grass has died out. Fall is the perfect time to seed these areas since new grass won’t need to compete with spring weeds, giving it a much better chance to take root. You can also take this opportunity to overseed your entire lawn, which will set the stage for a thicker lawn next year and naturally crowd out weeds.

Keep Your Grass Healthy

As the cooler temperatures of autumn arrive, you’ll likely be mowing less often, but there is still important work ahead to keep your grass healthy.

The early weeks of September are the perfect time to add a second round of fertilizer to your lawn, providing needed reserve nutrients that will give your lawn a great start next spring.

Next, don’t let leaves pile up. Fallen leaves smother healthy grass and also provide a haven for fungus, diseases, and insects that can damage your lawn. Instead, mulch leaves with your mower, chopping them into dime-sized pieces that can be safely left on the lawn, providing additional nutrients to your grass.

Finally, keep mowing your grass until it goes dormant. On your last cut of the season, set your mower blade to its lowest height to get a nice, short cut. Short grass is more resilient to damage and disease over the cold winter months.

Winter Care Schedule

Prepare for Next Year’s Lawn Care Schedule

Once the hard work is over for the season, it’s time to prepare for next year. Make notes about any lawn problems that occurred and begin researching solutions so you can hit the ground running next spring. You can also add scheduled lawn feedings to the calendar on your phone, so you don’t forget.

Winter is also a fantastic time to perform mower maintenance, replace broken tools, and sharpen your mower blade. Before storing your tools for the winter, be sure to empty the fuel tanks to prevent damage from ethanol-based gasoline.

Protect Your Lawn

While your grass may be dormant during the winter months, that doesn’t mean it can’t be damaged. That’s why it’s crucial to limit foot traffic on your lawn and avoid parking vehicles on the grass over the winter months.

Be careful when using rock salt (sodium chloride) or ice melt products around your lawn to de-ice your sidewalks or driveway. These products can damage the roots of your grass, resulting in brown patches next spring. Better yet, use an ice melt product specifically designed to be used around lawns and other plants for even more protection.

PowerPro Equipment Is Central PA’s Best Lawn Care Resource

While lawn care can sometimes feel like a never-ending battle, the quest for a lush, green lawn is worth the effort. Using quality tools, following a consistent schedule, and educating yourself as each new challenge arises will get your yard in better shape than you ever thought possible.

At PowerPro Equipment, we’re here to tame the toughest lawn care chores to help you achieve the lush lawn and garden you’ve always wanted. Visit your nearest showroom location to see the latest mowers, leaf blowers, trimmers, edgers, and more from great names like Husqvarna, Redmax, Hustler, Spartan, Toro and more.