We eagerly await the first signs of spring. Birds begin their annual flights to the UK and other animals settle into their comfortable wintering grounds. However, the first warm days in early March don’t mean it’s time for do-it-yourselfers to turn to lawn and garden maintenance.
March and April often feature several days of cool weather, with good amounts of rain making it almost impossible to prepare a garden or maintain a lawn. If you’ve created an annual lawn care calendar, you understand that although March 1st is the official first day of spring, you should ease into the new season by following some tried-and-true lawn care tips.
What you should not do
If you hire a lawn care company to prepare your lawn for spring, be sure to tell the professionals that your lawn is not yet ready for sod removal. The same principle applies to homeowners who decide to start the lawn themselves. Scarifying a lawn involves removing surface thatch to encourage water and fertilizer to penetrate deeper into the soil. You have to wait for natural growth to help the soil recover from scarification and that may mean waiting a long time after Mach arrives.
The first lawn treatment for spring.
Whether spring arrives sooner or later, the first lawn treatment to do is to implement a moss control strategy. By using lawn sand or pure soluble iron sulphate, you ensure that the moss is easy to scarify. However, do not remove the moss until you have mowed the lawn. After mowing the lawn for the first time, wait up to two weeks and then mow the lawn again. Remove dead moss and other stubble, aerate the lawn, and send fertilizer into the soil to provide nutrients to grass roots. Wait about three months to re-fertilize the soil to ensure your lawn is getting enough phosphorus, potassium, and nitrogen without flooding the soil with a large amount of fertilizer.
Follow the monthly lawn care schedule
Lawn care activities ramp up around March 1 when Mother Nature ushers in the season for healthy lawn growth. However, homeowners should follow lawn care schedules created to align lawn care tasks with typical weather conditions. Immersing yourself in lawn care activities long before you have to do them is a recipe for irreparable damage to your lawn.