What Your Need to Know About Your Fall Lawn Care Schedule
Fall Lawn Care Tips
As fall approaches, you may already be missing the long, warm, fun-filled days of summer, but fall has its own beauty and excitement. The holiday season is right around the corner, and fall is one of the most lovely times of the year as trees change color and you can enjoy fall bulbs and annuals. Here's what you need to know about what we’ll do to make your landscape look its best during the months of September and October.
September Fall Lawn Care
Lawn Care Application
You want your lawn to look beautiful moving into fall, so a lawn care application in September is important. The hot summer months can be hard on lawns, so it is important to provide plenty of fertilizer along with weekly maintenance tasks like watering to make your yard grow lush and green. This is also an important time to eliminate pests that may be developing in your lawn before they have an opportunity to burrow in for dormancy over the winter.
Lawn Renovations
Core Aeration
Summer foot traffic, lawnmowers, and other wear-and-tear can compress your lawn over the course of the summer. If your lawn hasn't been aerated since last year, the weight of snow will also have contributed to compacted soil.
When your soil is not sufficiently aerated, fertilizer, water, and air have a hard time reaching the root system, which will make your lawn less lush overall and tends to cause dead patches in the most compacted areas. Core aeration opens up your lawn so that every blade of grass will be healthier. It also provides an ideal environment for the slit seeding that we will do to repair bald spots and thin areas.
Slit Seeding
Even if you've been taking wonderful care of your lawn all summer, It may not be looking its best by September. Hot weather, periods of drought interspersed with heavy rainfall, and increased foot traffic can all create bald spots and areas where grass does not grow as well.
September is a perfect time to do lawn renovations to get your lawn looking great for the fall and provide a strong network of roots to see it through the winter. Slit seeding is the ideal way to get your lawn looking its best.
When slit seeding, we use a machine with a row of blades that dig into the soil to create slits. Seeds are then placed into the slits. This enables the seeds to get the best possible start with good contact with the soil and practically no possibility of them being blown away or consumed by birds. Your lawn will suddenly be considerably lusher without having to re-sod.
Fall Root Fertilization Begins
Your trees and shrubs have been growing hard all summer with the increased heat and the longer days. However, as fall begins, they may not have much energy to grow robustly without a little bit of help.
Fall root fertilization gives your trees and shrubs a burst of energy to help them grow robustly in the fall, providing much denser and more beautiful trees and shrubs throughout the winter. Root fertilization combined with regular pruning creates plants that are stable, strong, and beautiful.
Chlorosis Fertilizations
Chlorosis occurs when leaves turn yellow due to reduced chlorophyll. There are a number of reasons that this could occur, but by September the most likely reason is nutrient deficiencies. Assuming that your plants have been well cared for throughout the summer, they are unlikely to be suffering from damaged or compacted roots or poor drainage.
However, it is very common for plants to suffer from a lack of nutrients so late in the summer since they have been drawing heavily on all resources available to them for the past several months. Chlorosis fertilization gives your plants a burst of the fertilization that they need to turn them green and beautiful again.
Installation of Fall Annuals and Bulbs
Fall is a lovely time to be outside enjoying your garden, but unless you take steps now to put in plants that will thrive in the cooler weather, your yard won't be nearly as attractive as it was during the summer. The plants that thrive in the summer heat are unlikely to survive on into the fall.
You are probably already noticing your summer annuals becoming less robust by September. Fall annuals and bulbs replace your summer annuals to provide a beautiful showing for fall. We are happy to discuss with you in detail what kind of color scheme you would prefer, which flowers are your favorites, and anywhere you may want to create a new flower bed.
Call for a Snow Plow Estimate
If you live in the Lake Bluff or Lake Forest areas, now is the time to call us for snowplow estimates. It may seem hard to imagine during the still warm days of September that soon the snow will be deep enough to impact your life, but winter storms will be coming before you know it. We can give you an estimate for how much it will cost to plow snow when this is necessary and make sure that you are on our agenda to have snow plowed as soon as you need us.
October Fall Lawn Care
Continue Lawn Care Application
October is typically the last month in which your lawn will be growing robustly and will benefit from a lawn care application. This final bout of fertilizer gives your lawn the energy it needs to look green and lush until it is covered by winter snow.
Turn OFF IRRIGATION
Throughout the summer, you have likely needed weekly watering to keep your grass and gardens green and counter the intense heat of the summer sun. However, as we move into October, plants will grow more slowly and are less likely to need regular watering.
Over-watering at this time can compact the soil that has just been aerated and drown plants that are trying to prepare for winter dormancy. Therefore, we will turn off irrigation at this time and turn to watering on an as-needed basis.
Fall Clean Up
Any dead plant matter, fallen branches, and other debris should be cleaned up now so that it won't sit all winter. Dead plant matter sitting over the winter can be a hiding place for pests like insects and rodents.
Obstacles like fallen branches can also be dangerous as they will be impossible to see under the snow. It is much easier to clean up this kind of debris now before the ground freezes, so October is typically the perfect time for general fall clean-up across your garden.
Plant New Trees and Shrubs
If you've noticed places where the grass became much drier quicker or if there are places where you've wanted shade over the summer, now is the time to point them out so that we can plant new trees or shrubs to provide additional shade. If you would like a new signature flowering shrub or beautiful tree, this is also a great time to plant it. Planting in October gives new plants time to take root so they will be ready to burst into leaves in the springtime.
Chat with Our holiday Décor Manager
Halloween is right around the corner, and Thanksgiving and Christmas will be upon you before you know it. This is the perfect time to discuss holiday decorations and lighting so that your home will look beautiful throughout the holiday season. We can arrange for lovely holiday pots to decorate your porch or front drive, discuss the perfect way to hang holiday lighting, and go over other decor options with you. Your imagination is the limit of what we can do to make your home and garden a holiday wonderland.
Do Holiday Lighting Yourself or Hire a Professional
Nothing gets you in the holiday spirit like seeing your house lit up with holiday lights for the first time of the year. If you grew up helping your parents hang holiday lighting, and if you've done it yourself in the past, you may wonder whether it is worth hiring a professional to help this year.
Holiday lighting fills us with cheer, but it can also lead to potential dangers. As many as 150 home fires are started every year due to holiday and decorative lighting. People are also injured falling off of ladders and out of trees as they attempt to hang their own lighting.
This is a stressful time of year for many people, and you may find yourself rushing to get everything done, which makes it more likely that mistakes will be made. Hiring a professional ensures that lights will not only look great but be installed to the highest safety standards so you won't have to worry about anything as you are enjoying your lights.
As an added benefit, we've installed thousands of lights over the years on all kinds of different homes in this area, so we know exactly how to install lights to look their best.
Trust Us with Your Fall Lawn Care
Kinnucan Tree Experts and Landscape Company have been caring for landscapes in the North Shore area for many years, and we know exactly what to do to make your lawn and garden look their best in September and October, as well as throughout the rest of the year. Fall Landscaping sets the stage for how your yard will look throughout the winter, so be sure to give us a call so that we can make your landscape look its best.