As I am out and about in my personal life, I am often engaged in conversation about what I do for a living. My wife and children hate this part because this is where they lose me for an undetermined length of time as the “lawn” questions begin! If they are lucky, I will manage to keep the conversation primarily focused on the lawn and not go into the entire landscape. While they will disagree, I have gotten better over the years and have tried to talk about something else, but I promise honey, the other guy brought it up ;)!
If I had to pick one piece of advice that fit’s everyone in the pursuit of a nice lawn, it would undoubtedly be how you mow your lawn! Mowing your lawn is, by far, one of the most important things to having a great lawn! We can do everything under the sun to your lawn from fertilizer and fungicides to fall seeding. However, none of these will perform at it’s peak if the lawn isn’t mowed properly. As we approach late fall many of you have some nice new grass coming up from your fall seeding. By now, hopefully you have mowed a couple of times since your seeding. This will help your new seed send roots deep into the ground which is critical for the turf to survive the winter.
If you’re seeing leaves falling, it is important to remove them from your lawn as often as you can. Under layers of leaves, the tender new grass will easily suffocate by the lack of sunlight and oxygen. If you only have a few leaves, it’s ok to mulch them with your mower providing you can keep up and have a good sharp blade! If they are coming down faster than this will allow for, you will need to blow or rake them and have them removed according to your local municipality. I highly suggest using a leaf blower versus raking as to not pull the new roots out of the ground.
The last thing to worry about are the winter weeds you may see coming up. Well, the truth is, they really are nothing to worry about until spring. It’s better to let the new grass mature and deal with them in the spring. Remember, keep the traffic to a minimum on your new grass. Until next time, fall is a great time to “Love Your Lawn”!
