With winter ending and spring beginning, it’s time to get prepared for your year of lawn care. To set yourself up for an efficient and effective year, it’s good to become familiar with what to expect when spring finally rolls around. Here are a few of the top tips for an efficient early spring lawn care strategy. A healthy spring leads to a healthy, beautiful, and stress-free lawn throughout the year.
Keep the Lawn Free of Lawn Debris
After the strong winds and wild weather of our Pennsylvania winter, it’s no wonder that we find plenty of lawn debris in the early spring. Broken branches, sticks, and piles of wet leaves build up in the lawn over the winter. Clearing all of the lawn debris from your lawn should be priority number one before you do anything else. All of that debris is a breeding ground for infectious lawn diseases and turf-damaging lawn fungi. It can also be a great hiding place for spring pests. Simply rake and remove any lawn debris from your lawn as early in the season as possible. This frees your lawn from the possibility of a stressful lawn disease right when it comes out of winter dormancy.
Winter Weed Control and Spring Weed Prevention
Weeds are the most consistent problem facing Pennsylvania homeowners every year. They persist throughout the year, constantly stressing the lawn by siphoning off essential nutrients and water. A weed infestation weakens the immune system or your turf, making an opportunity for diseases, fungi, pests, and even more weeds to move in. Our 5 Step Lawn Care program is essential when working to not only build a healthy root system but also to aid in weed prevention. These applications in western Pennsylvania are designed for our cool-season grasses.
Most of the winter weeds affecting your lawn in the early spring are classified as broadleaf weeds. These weeds appear mid-March and last until late April or early May. These broadleaf weeds tend to find spots to grow in your lawn if you have thin or bare areas, low soil pH, poor lawn maintenance practices, stressed out turf and a number of other conditions present. The herbicide that is used during the early spring application will not only target these pesky winter weeds but is safe for your good grasses and will not harm them.
Common Spring Weeds in our western Pennsylvanian Lawns:
- Bittercress
- Corn Speedwell
- Henbit
- Chickweed
- Purple Deadnettle
- Crabgrass
- Shepherd’s Purse
- Dandelion
- Groundsel
Sprinkler System Preparation
The next important step in preparing your Pennsylvania lawn for spring is sprinkler system preparation. In the fall, we need to winterize our sprinkler systems by blowing out the water lines and shutting the system down. That means, come spring you need to start the sprinkler system back up again. The best time to start up your sprinkler system in Pennsylvania depends on the weather but is usually in the mid to late spring. Wait for the last frost of the winter and for nighttime temperatures to remain above freezing.
When you start up your sprinkler system, make sure to only do so one zone at a time. This is a great way for you to inspect the functionality of each zone and check for any damage sustained over the winter. Watch for ruptured lines and damaged or disabled sprinkler heads. Set your timer so the sprinklers only run in the early morning, allowing the excess water to dry out throughout the day. You may not need to water the lawn too much this spring, depending on how much rain we get. Aim to provide your lawn with one inch of water every week, whether it’s manual watering or natural rain.
Prepare Your Pennsylvania Lawn for Spring With Services From Lawn Rx
The best way to prepare for your early spring lawn care is by investing in a lawn care program near you. Here at Lawn Rx, we have everything you need to provide for your lawn in the spring, summer, fall and early winter. We have mosquito control services, as well as perimeter pest control and flea and tick control services; helping to keep those annoying and dangerous pests out of your lawn.
Call us for more information at (724) 539-1003 or get a free estimate here. Don’t forget to check out our educational blog with interesting articles on lawn care, weed control, lawn diseases, pest control, and more! Follow us on Facebook for all of the latest news and offerings from Lawn Rx.