As the weather cools down and fall arrives, it’s important to consider what seasonal care and maintenance your backyard landscape needs.
Let’s take a look at why fall care is important and some seasonal maintenance tips for your backyard.
Why is Fall Landscape Maintenance Important?
Proper seasonal care and maintenance in the fall will prepare your backyard for winter and spring. Neglecting essential tasks like leaf removal and mowing in the fall can result in an unhealthy lawn after winter, potentially causing issues such as snow mold.
Also, fall pruning helps maintain your plants, ensuring they are ready to sprout new growth after a dormant winter season.
Your backyard landscape may seem lifeless over the winter months, but doing seasonal maintenance will create a healthy environment come springtime.
Let’s take a look at some seasonal landscape care you can complete before winter!
Fall Plantings
Many flowers grown from bulbs are great options to plant in the fall, such as tulips or daffodils.
Bulb plants are quite hardy and require a period of cooling before they grow in the spring, which makes them perfect for fall planting.
You can also research other plants that thrive after being planted in the fall, including some varieties of trees.
Garden Maintenance
Part of seasonal care for your backyard includes cleaning up your garden beds. Tasks like weeding and checking the health of your plants are good to do before winter arrives.
If you’ve mulched your garden beds in the spring, you’ll probably have less maintenance to do in the fall, thanks to fewer weeds poking through the mulch.
Fall Pruning
Depending on the plant variety, fall can be a great time for pruning. Pruning in the fall will help by removing dead shoots and leaving room for new spring growth.
Many perennial plants, such as daylilies and peonies, will benefit from being cut back in the fall.
Lawn Care
Leaf Removal
Clearing fallen leaves from your backyard helps prevent issues during winter. Removing leaf debris gives your grass better access to sunlight in fall and winter, promoting a healthier lawn.
If your lawn and garden beds are covered by a thick layer of leaves at the end of fall, clear them before winter to maintain a neat and healthy landscape. Raking, leaf-blowing, or mowing are all great options for leaf removal.
Mowing
As the weather cools down in fall and grass growth begins to slow, adjust your mowing schedule. With each mow into the fall season, reduce the height of your lawn mower deck to get a closer cut.
When daytime temperatures reach below 10°C, plan your final mow. The final height of your grass before winter should be shorter than in the summer to help prevent leaves from getting caught in the grass.
Winter length varies based on the type of grass you have, but consider a final blade height of 2.5 inches or shorter. Keeping your lawn shorter for the winter can help prevent snow mold and encourage it to bounce back in the spring.
Raking/Dethatching Your Lawn
To help keep your lawn healthy throughout the colder months, use a strong metal rake to remove the layer of dead grass that sits at the surface of the soil.
Removing this layer, called thatch, will help contribute to better spring growth.
Grass Fertilization
If you’re planning to fertilize your lawn in the fall, it’s best to do this about two to three weeks before the ground freezes.
Fall fertilization will allow the grass to take in the nutrients before winter.
Water Feature and Pond Maintenance
Clean Up
Providing some care to your backyard water features is an essential part of seasonal maintenance.
Leaves and tree debris can pile up in your backyard water feature. Clean out any debris before winter to keep it clean and functioning properly.
Fall Shutdown
Keeping the area around your water feature clean will make fall shutdown easy. During fall, clean out and prepare your pond components for storage, including the pumps and water lines.
If you’d like to leave the fall cleanup to the professionals, our Premium and Deluxe Maintenance packages include a fall shutdown visit for your water feature.
We’ll take care of removing any leaves and debris from the pond, cutting back any plant material, and making all the necessary preparations to get your water feature ready for winter.
Some hardy fish species, like koi, can be kept in the pond during winter as long as they have adequate ventilation and aeration. With expert care, we can ensure your fish’s habitat is ready to support them all winter long.
Winter Protection for Plants
Some plant varieties may be sensitive to frost or the winter environment in your backyard.
Young trees, for example, may require a trunk covering to protect them from the winter sun. With no leaves to protect their branches and trunk, exposed bark can become sensitive to direct sunlight.
Wrap the trunk of a newly planted tree for its first two winters. Wrapping the tree trunk with burlap is a great way to do this, allowing airflow but preventing excess sun exposure.
For other young trees, such as cedars, wrapping them loosely with burlap can help prevent winter damage from wind or snow.
Prep Tools for Spring
Your backyard may require fall maintenance, but your gardening tools need to be looked after, too!
Clean out the components of your lawn mower and prepare it for storage. Ensuring the mower deck is clean and the blade is sharp are just two ways to make spring start-up easier.
Add fuel stabilizer to your gas tools and run them until empty to ensure no gas goes stale during winter storage.
Fall is also a great time to organize your tools and outdoor equipment so that it’s ready for spring. Make sure to put away any tools you won’t be using, like your lawn mower. Reorganizing your space to keep winter items like shovels or a snow blower accessible will make winter easier!
Conclusion
There are many seasonal tasks to consider in the fall to keep your landscape healthy throughout the winter. We’ve shared just a few ideas in this post, including gardening, lawn care, water feature maintenance, plant protection, and spring prep.
If you’d like to learn how Raymar can help you maintain your landscape, please contact us!