Winter lawn care The Clock is Ticking: Prepare Your Yard!
The fall season always reminds us of everything we need to wrap up before winter. Finish work on the house exterior, make sure HVAC and fireplaces work, etc. For all these tasks, timing is everything. The same goes for your Pennsylvania yard.
There are thousands of tips floating around out there for general autumn yard preparation. In this blog, we focus in on 3 of the most important ones for Pennsylvania and Northern Delaware. Don’t miss these in preparing your lawn and landscape for winter protection and spring growth!
Clean Up and Shred Leaves
As landscapers, we have a love-hate relationship with leaves. They provide kaleidoscopic color through October but block the lawn from sunlight, oxygen, and water when they fall. Worse, if they aren’t removed before the first snow, they turn into a dense, thick mat, killing grass and welcoming disease. If raking thousands of leaves from your yard sounds awful, we have good news. You don’t have to! Alternatively, shred leaves into confetti-like pieces with a mulch mower and leave them. This technique alleviates blocked air circulation while allowing the leaves to decompose into a natural fertilizer and weed control agent. Here’s a full tutorial on how to shred leaves properly.
Remove the Dead and Dying
Fall is the time to remove the dead to make room for the new. To cut down on the clean-up you’ll need to do in spring, remove dead annuals. This not only improves the winter aesthetic of your landscape but helps prevent the transmission of any disease or insect problems from one season to the next. Once you’ve removed the annuals and other organic waste from the yard, add them to a new compost pile. Layer compost that’s had time to break down on landscape beds before the ground freezes (usually early November). This protects soil and decomposes through the winter, providing a full supply of nutrients just in time for spring planting.
Wrap Delicate Shrubs in Burlap
It’s time to pull out the winter wear. For your shrubs, that is. Heavy snow, ice, and freezing winds in Pennsylvania and Northern Delaware can do horrors to delicate shrubs. To preserve your investments, wrap them in burlap like this, which shields them from winter stressors. And, as a side note, too little water and fertilizer throughout the year significantly decreases shrubs resistance to harsh winter conditions, so be sure to properly care for your trees and shrubs in every season. For added protection, you can use the decomposed leaves or loose mulch to cover the soil around tree and shrub bases.
By investing a few hours into these Pennsylvania and Delaware-specific winter preparation steps, you’ll save yourself clean-up time in the spring and enjoy the benefits of a protected, beautiful yard!