If you’ve spent the summer installing travertine pavers in your yard and helping your garden thrive, you may be concerned about what will happen when fall and winter come around. You chose wholesale stone pavers because you want your yard to look its best, and the last thing you want to do is come out to enjoy it next spring and find that it’s dead and ruined. That’s why you should take the opportunity now, before the cold weather arrives, to prepare your yard for the fall and winter.
Make sure to cut it
DoItYourself.com explained that as long as your grass is still growing, you should take the time to cut it. Before the winter arrives, you should always keep your grass at a length of about 2 1/2 inches. While some people may think that it’s a good idea to keep their lawn a little longer when the weather begins to turn, mice and voles love the long grass that’s under the snow, so you should keep it trimmed to keep them at bay. To minimize potential problems, the news source recommended that you lower the blades on your mower to about 2 inches to minimize potential problems and ensure that you’re keeping your lawn short enough.
Don’t stop watering
You may think that once it stops being hot and dry outside you don’t have to water it often anymore. However, that’s not the case. According to MSN, in most areas of the U.S., watering shouldn’t end with Labor Day, and a lawn should get an inch of water every 14 to 21 days until winter fully arrives.
Be sure to feed the lawn
MSN spoke to Jim Welshans, regional turfgrass educator at Pennsylvania State University, who explained that once fall arrives, it’s important for you to feed your lawn. He said that cool-weather grasses such as Kentucky bluegrass, fescues and perennial ryegrass should be fertilized in mid-September, and then again sometime before Thanksgiving or before the ground freezes over. Welshans added that a good way to determine if your lawn is getting all of the nutrients it needs is to get a soil test.
This will show you information like soil pH and nutrient levels and help you decide how you should be treating your lawn. You may find that your lawn is lacking in certain nutrients, and you should purchase the right fertilizer if that’s the case. Fertilizers contains three nutrients – nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium – and you can determine how much of each nutrient is in the fertilizer by looking at the bag. For instance, DoItYourself.com explained that 25-3-10 fertilizer contains 25 percent nitrogen, 3 percent phosphorus and 10 percent potassium.
Take care of ponds and fountains
If you have ponds or fountains in your yard, then you should do your best to clean them out in early fall. For example, remove any abundant leaves that could decay and cause spikes in ammonia levels that may be harmful to fish.
