DIY How to Care for your Lawn in the fall. 4-steps for fall lawn care

thanks to new guys the pest at London's today we're gonna go over my lawn fall preparation tips alright lawn ninjas you want to have the best looking lawn next season well guess what it all starts with fall preparation now's the time to get off the couch get to the doing let's go step number one proper watering now when it comes to fall time and watering it's important that we don't overwater and it's important that we don't under water now you notice my lawn is a lot more green than a lot of the people around me and the difference is is they cut the water early now what that does for the lawn is it forces the grass into going to sleep to protect itself or dormancy now it's also just stress dormancy and it affects your root development so I'm making sure that I'm watering once a week at about a quarter of an inch to force water down now sometimes I'm only watering once every ten days depending on how far the water is penetrating and I'm just watching the color of my grass now truth be told the ground temperatures below 55 degrees make it so the lawn isn't growing super vigorous and that's not necessarily what I want what I do want is I want to maintain my color I want to maintain my balance but I want to make sure there's enough water deep enough that the roots want to chase now it's very typical in the fall time that your daytime and nighttime temperatures are gonna begin to come down dramatically which means that we're gonna have less evaporation occurring and we don't need to water as much now as a general of thumb we don't want the soil to completely dry out at any given time now since everybody's lawns are different soil types are different there's no possible way I can tell you how many minutes you need to have on your sprinkler system it's my recommendation is to do what I do get a soil probe or get a screwdriver get in the lawn and see how far the water is actually penetrating a good plug will be about six to eight inches and it won't be too wet but it also won't be dressed as a prime example of what drought stress dormancy does to a lot now will the lawn survive yeah absolutely it will it just it's looking dry but when we don't have water six to eight inches down it's got nothing to chase now can you fix this in the springtime yes you can but you're stunting some very favorable root growth step number two lowering the height of cut now I know there's a lot of us out there that like having long cool season grass or even long warm season grass but the bottom line is fall preparation it's important to lower the height of cut to prevent fungal problems like snow mold [Music] now in my opinion there's two ways to safely lower the height of cut now you definitely don't want to go from four inches down to one inch so my recommendation for you guys to keep the grass long is start increasing your mow frequency if you're only mowing once a week increase that to two to three times per week and gradually step down the lawn now a lot of you guys have heard about the 1/3 rule you don't want to cut one more than 1/3 of the grass blade at a time to avoid undue stress in the lawn now option number two is to wait for the ground temperatures to get below 40 degrees at that point the grass is done growing topically and you can safely mow from 4 inches down to 1 inch if that's the way that you want to do it now the only problem with doing it that way is this gonna make your lawn look like hay all winter long instead of having a nice rich color leading into the winter step number 3 yard cleanup doing a yard cleanup at the end of the season is a very important part it's important to remember that our mowers are not perfect and we've dropped a lot of debris on the soil surface now we may not be able to see all of it but there is a certain amount that is definitely sitting on top of the soil now one thing about fall time that I think we all recognize is our trees start dropping leaves and they also start dropping seeds now when this happens it ends up acting like mulch or a weed barrier and it can suffocate areas now the other thing is is fungus a lot of you guys end up with brown patch melting out fungus because there's too much stuff on the soil surface now an easy remedy for that that I like to use is a dethatcher now you can get the Green Works T Thatcher or preferably the Sun Jodie Thatcher like I use or you can just use a dethatch rake and pull it all out at fall time now as a positive side effects are removing the lawn litter you're gonna see an increase in color by removing the dead debris that's just sitting there and clouding your color now the other positive side effect is you remove the debris that harbors fungus making yard clean-up a fantastic preventive net now once we moved along debris we can move on to an optional service called lawn aeration and I say it's optional because it depends on the soil type you have if you have clay type soils you're gonna experience more compaction with all the little ones running on it the lawn aeration helps reduce that soil compact now think of lawn aeration as if you're tilling a garden it's going to increase oxygen in the soil but more importantly we're going to reduce water runoff and puddling now we're also removing and reducing thatch build-up and improving fertilizer uptake my recommended aeration schedule is in the spring and fall when the ground temperatures are below 55 degrees and if you have sandy soil one time in the spring step number four lawn fertilization alright lawn ninjas now the point of my fall fertilization is to piss the neighbors off and just keep it as green and as simple as possible now here's my opinion on this your majors which are your nitrogen phosphorus potassium are more important than your minors simply because the microorganisms aren't going to be pulling those minors as quickly as they will the majors now my focus on the majors are going to be nitrogen and potassium and a little bit of phosphorus but I'm most interested in the nitrogen and the potassium you're probably wondering hey Jinja I get the nitrogen thing but why the potassium well potassium helps the blades of the grass sustain the cold weather longer so I'm going to be using a 7% nitrogen with a 14% and that's going to help me keep it greener for a longer then you may not have access to this exact product in you Aryan the only thing I want you to focus on is the first number and the last number the first number needs to be higher than a seven and the last number needs to be higher than a ten the ground temperatures getting below fifty five degrees we want to make sure that you don't purchase a slow-release fertilizer any sort of urea and ammoniacal nitrogen that is a quick release is preferred now as long as you can get that last number on the bag higher I just want you to follow the recommended rates on the bag so if the recommended rates are six pounds per thousand square feet just follow those instructions all right lawn ninjas you want to piss the neighbors off and keep that grass looking green throughout the fall and early winter while the other one's going dormant follow these easy steps we want to start with a quick release fertilizer now you're gonna hear me say some of them might shock you but using urea or a quick release ammoniacal nitrogen is the way to go you can choose a ten percent nitrogen all the way up to a twenty percent without having any problems now I personally I'm going to use somewhere around a quarter of a pound to half a pound of nitrogen to release and stimulate some growth now that's not actually what's going to make everything just stay nice and Hardy and green that's my potassium potassium will make it survive the cold weather longer throughout the season well guys this concludes my lawn fall preparation video you guys have any questions or concerns hit me up in the comments love to help you out till the next time guys the pest and lawn jinja's [Music]

Channel: Pest and Lawn Ginja

Views: 133,614

Keywords: fall fertilizer, fall lawn renovation, fall lawn treatment, steps for fall lawn care, care for your lawn in the fall, lawn care tips for winter, grass care for fall, fall grass tips, lawn care for fall, fall power rake, winter lawn care tips, fall fertilizer for lawn, last mow of the season, dethatching lawn, fall lawn fertilizer, fall grass treatment, lawn preperation for fall, lawn care, fall lawn care, pest and lawn ginja, lawn aeration, aeration, aerator, lawn aerator

Id: P-PlbxOnzFU

Length: 8min 29sec (509 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 20 2019