Fall is the Most Important Time to Aerate Your Lawn
Whew! Your lawn survived the crackling heat, limited water, and heavy foot traffic of summer. Now in fall, it needs to gobble up nutrients so that it can recover and get ready for the snow and ice of winter. The way you care for your lawn now before the snows hit will determine whether you have a lush, green, beautiful lawn in spring or a sickly patch of nearly bald land.
The Importance of Aeration
There are many things you can do to prep your lawn for fall. (Read our previous blog post on fall lawn prep.) One of your most important lawn chores is to aerate your lawn. That means pulling small plugs out of your lawn, in essence creating breathing holes so that your lawn can more easily suck in needed oxygen and nutrients. You can do this by hand, but that would take forever. Instead, it’s a better idea to buy or rent an aeration machine or to hire a local lawn care service to perform aeration for you.
Your lawn needs oxygen, sunlight, water, and nutrients to survive, just like you do. The act of aeriation makes it easier for these crucial things to make it past the top layer of grass and into the roots of your lawn. When your roots get better nutrition, they can withstand the frozen winter and use their energy reserves to grow back robustly in the spring.
Follow Up Aeration with Fertilization
After you aerate, your lawn will be prepped and ready to absorb lots of good nutrients before winter. That’s why post-aeration is the perfect time for you to put down some fertilizer. When you put down fertilizer, which contains nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium, it will go straight to the roots of your lawn.
If you hire a lawn care company like Nature’s Elite Lawn & Landscape, the company can provide both aeration and fertilization services at the same time. This can save you a considerable amount of effort, especially if you don’t have many free hours.
If you live in Boise, Eagle, or Meridian, contact us today about scheduling a fall aeration and fertilization.