With spring around the corner, late winter is the time to reassess and refresh your lawn for the glory of spring and summer. Lawn care professionals are experienced and knowledgeable to give your lawn the best support in early spring. Even though the winter is in full force, now is the perfect time to start communication with a lawn care professional and get ready for spring. It’ll be here before you know it. Here’s how landscaping professionals will refresh your front yard for the spring with lawn care in Allentown, PA, and South Whitehall, PA areas.
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Late Winter Assessment
The first step your landscape company will make is a site visit to determine what your lawn needs for a healthy growing season. A late winter assessment will determine which areas of the lawn need the most care and how to best respond to the particular challenges of your landscape. The most important late-winter task is testing the soil to determine whether the nutrient levels are high enough and in correct proportion to support healthy turf growth.
Early Spring Tasks
After soil testing, your contractor will go over recommendations and set up a schedule for seasonal lawn care. Some activity can take place in late winter if the ground isn’t frozen such, as replacing damaged or dead grass with new sod. It’s important that no dirt is left exposed to weeds during the early spring because they’re fast-germinating and tough. This is why overseeding and/or sod installation is something to be taken care of quickly, to give the new grass a chance to establish itself before weeds take over.
Any new sod or seeds laid down during or early spring won’t have taken root in the soil just yet, so it’s important to be delicate during this time. Your lawn care professionals will take care of fertilizing and weeding to make sure that root systems can develop early and the grass can anchor itself, getting ready for a fast and healthy growing season.
Other spring tasks include aeration, dethatching, and application of a slow-release fertilizer. Aeration and dethatching are critical because they ensure that water, air, and nutrients are absorbed by the root system. A compacted lawn invites runoff and results in suffocated roots. A lawn that’s thick with thatch will also struggle because thatch can act as a roof.
A slow-release fertilizer should be applied only after aeration and dethatching. Just imagine all the fertilizer that’s applied, sitting uselessly on the surface of the lawn instead of being absorbed into the roots. At this time, your landscape company may also apply a pre-emergent herbicide to get a step ahead of weeds.
Spring is all about preparation for the ravages of summer. Giving your lawn the support it needs early in the season means that the lawn will be better equipped to handle weeds (a thick turf will discourage weeds from germinating); disease, and drought. A lawn that’s already competing for resources, or one that has developed a shallow root system, will suffer in the heat and drought and will be more susceptible to attack from disease and insects.
Soon after spring growth starts, so does mowing. Mowing is beneficial to your lawn because it concentrates energy to the roots, and keeps the grass at just the right height for optimal water absorption. Your lawn care professionals use pro-level mowers with sharp blades that cleanly slice the blades of grass instead of tearing them with dull blades (which causes dry, brown tips of unhealthy summer grass).
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