Early spring is an important time to address lawn maintenance. The time to prepare your lawn and equipment for the season. Remove thatch, pre-emergent weed treatments, soil testing and lawn food to cultivate an environment in which it will thrive.
The best way to ensure you have a lush, green lawn each summer is to give it some extra care and attention each spring. Maximize your time and satisfaction by taking the right steps at the right time, using these helpful tips from the lawn maintenance experts at Calvert Lawn Care.
Spring Lawn Maintenance Tips
For best results, customize your lawn care based on the type of grass that is on your property: Calvert County lawns generally consist of turf type tall fescue, fine fescue, bluegrass and perennial.
Cool-Season Grass
Varieties such as fescue, bluegrass and perennial undergo a moderate growth spurt in the spring, but peak growing season is in the fall.
Because they are more susceptible to suffering in the heat it’s important to kickstart your lawn maintenance in the spring to ensure the grass is strong enough to withstand higher temperatures during the summer.
Warm-Season Grass
Bermuda, centipede, St. Augustine, and other warm-season varieties do well in the heat of the summer and remain dormant throughout the winter months. Growth begins to occur after the last spring frost and continues until mid-October or the first frost.
Early Spring Lawn Maintenance
Tune Up The Mower
While you may be full of enthusiasm, resist heavy yard work until the soil has had time to dry out and your lawn has had time to reawaken.
Spending too much time on your lawn in the early stages can damage new shoots or compact the soil, so invest your time wisely by tuning up your mower, cleaning garden tools.
Clean Up Your Lawn
Walk around your property and collect larger items such as twigs, branches, or other debris. Give the lawn a deep raking to remove thatch or dead grass. Detect dead spots or areas where the soil may have become compacted.
Getting the small debris cleaned up will make your yard cleaner and easier to mow. Removing debris and thatch should always be included in your spring lawn maintenance.
Mow The Lawn High
Start mowing when the ground is dry enough, and grass is long enough to require cutting. Cut at the proper height for your type of grass. Avoid mowing too low, grass cut too short allows sunlight to reach the soil, encouraging weed seeds to germinate.
Once your spring grass begins to grow, start mowing your lawn regularly. Check out our lawn mowing tips to review proper techniques for mowing a healthy lawn.
Leave The Grass Clippings
Grass-cycling is the process of leaving grass clippings on the lawn. Instead of bagging the clippings, let them spread out on your lawn to recycle grass elements back into the soil and to help your lawn retain more water. This process can help give your yard a boost at the beginning of the spring season.
Crabgrass Preventer With Lawn Food
Spring is a great time to get a handle on weeds, but you will need to choose between overseeding and killing weeds as any herbicide will prevent the growth of new grass. Apply pre-emergent weed killer with lawn food as a preventive measure to stop crabgrass and weeds from developing.
Ovoid weed control products with new grass seed, use only a starter fertilizer when you plant new grass seed.
Early Spring Checklist
- Tune up your mower
- Clean up your lawn
- Mow the lawn high
- Crabgrass preventer with lawn food
Late Spring Lawn Maintenance
Weed Control Plus Lawn Food
Cool-season grasses Calvert County Lawns should be fertilized in the spring, summer and fall during the peak growing season, for those lawns without an irrigation system it may be best to fertilized early and late spring, early and late fall only.
For warm-season grasses, apply fertilizer once active growth begins in mid to late spring. Always use a starter fertilizer for new grass.
Grub Killer Season Long
The key to controlling grubs is to kill them before they hatch and begin to cause damage to your lawn. Applying a preventative grub control product in the spring will provide much better grub control than waiting until after the damage has occurred.
Late spring is the time that hibernating grubs in the lawn begin to crawl toward the surface to chew grass roots, before turning into beetles. It’s also a great time to apply a Grub Killer to deal with the grubs that will hatch in coming weeks.
Overseed Bare Patches
Bare patches are unhealthy and unsightly and can be eliminated by overseeding your lawns bare patches. Cool-season grasses Calvert County Lawns should be aerated and over-seeded in the fall for best results, but warm-season grass seed can be planted once outdoor temperatures reach the 70s and the danger of frost has passed.
Consider Having Your Lawn Reseeded
Depending on your lawn’s history and condition, we may recommend overseeding. This is often the case in yards with large areas of dead or thin grass. Aeration and overseeding is sometimes necessary for your spring lawn maintenance.
Calvert Lawn Care’s exclusive aeration equipment can aerate your lawn evenly and help it grow thicker and healthier. Once a lawn is reseeded, it’s necessary to water the grass properly.
Your local Calvert Lawn Care will give you detailed instructions on post-treatment care.
Late Spring Check List
- Weed control plus lawn food
- Grub killer season long
- Overseed bare patches
- Overseed lawn – Optional consideration
- Aeration – Option consideration
Additional Tips
- Mowing – Begin mowing once sufficient growth has occurred, setting the mower height to remove no more than one-third of the grass blade.
- Thatch – Always watch your thatch buildup level, lawns need to breath. Mowing your lawn weekly so that no more than one-third of the grass blade is removed will help control thatch levels.
- Watering – Aim for approximately one-inch of water per week.
- Pest control – Grubs may emerge during late spring and begin to feast on your lawn, apply grub killer PLUS.
- Aeration – Spring is not the ideal time to aerate the lawn, but circumstances may require it.
If the soil is so compacted that existing grass can’t grow, it may be necessary to aerate in the spring, especially healthy lawns. Never aerate dormant lawns, there are times when aeration is necessary and should be part of your spring lawn maintenance.
Spring is a time of renewal and a great time to prepare your home and yard for the warmer days ahead. For all your lawn maintenance needs, contact the professionals at Calvert Lawn Care or call (410) 777-5650 to arrange for an estimate.
