Winter can be a rough time for your landscaping, so fall is the perfect time for homeowners to take stock of their property and plan what they can do to help their landscape survive the winter and start with its best foot forward in the spring.
Seeds for Success
The best chance for your lawn to survive the winter and come back strong is to aerate while it is still green in the fall. This serves to break up the dry, compacted soil, enabling water and nutrients to reach the roots.
Also, take time to do seeding, helping to ensure thick grass growth in the spring. Also, your lawn is made less susceptible to disease by having a variety of hardy grass types.
Watch Your Pruning
While fall might be a good time to remove annuals and cut back perennials in your garden, it’s not the best time to prune shrubs and trees. It will encourage new, tender growth that will be susceptible to winter damage. You can prune trees in the winter after they have become dormant. Shrubs can be pruned as well, but only if their new growth has blooms.
Keep on Watering
Perennials, trees and shrubs need to be watered throughout the autumn. Newly plantings, which don’t have fully established root systems, also need watering. All your trees should be watered about every three to four weeks as long as temperatures are above freezing.
A Time for Fertilizing
As the earth cools down and becomes more uniformly moist in fall, it is a good time to fertilize the still-growing trees. This helps to increase the availability of nutrients and encourages root growth. Trees and shrubs with a healthy productive root system are far better prepared to last the winter, with fewer dead branches, and they grow well in spring.
Plant Ahead
Yes, you can do planting in the fall that yields green results in the spring. The cool air and warm soil are perfect for plantings of trees and shrubs. You should put bulbs in the ground by mid-October, and trees and shrubs need to go in the end of the same month.
To help you prepare for the ravages of winter, or to recover once they’re done, schedule your free landscaping estimate from us today. At Proactive Landscaping, we are your complete source for lawn care, landscaping, landscape lighting and Christmas light installation in Broken Arrow, Tulsa and other parts of Oklahoma.
