6 Fall Lawn Care Tips for Beautiful Grass in Pennsylvania

While the fall is actually the most important lawn care season with vital tasks that should be performed to ensure your lawn is its healthiest, it’s often overlooked for many reasons. For one, the “outdoor season” is winding down and folks start spending less time outside. Homeowners also think they may be able to delay many lawn care tasks until the spring and not worry about their lawn until then.

The truth is, fall lawn care in Pennsylvania is important and should not be ignored. If you have a hunch that there are some fall lawn care tasks you should be doing, you’re exactly right. We can help guide you with some fall lawn care advice that will help you determine exactly what needs to be done to keep your lawn in Allentown, Bethlehem, or Easton, PA looking beautiful.

1. Aeration

One of the best fall lawn care tips we can offer is to aerate your lawn every fall. Aeration is the process of creating small holes throughout your lawn by pulling small soil plugs, also called cores, with a special piece of machinery. This allows more oxygen, water, and nutrients to penetrate deep into the soil, down to the root zone, where they’re needed most. Aeration is ultimately going to give you a thicker and greener lawn.

2. Overseeding

Having overseeding performed at the same time as aeration will give you the best possible results. That’s because aeration provides better seed-to-soil contact. In other words, the cores of soil that are pulled from your lawn create the perfect place for your seed to begin growing. Seeds also germinate best in the fall when the air is cool but the soil is still warm and moist. This provides ample growing conditions that aren’t “too hot” to stress your new grass.

3. Fall Lawn Care Fertilizer

Using late fall fertilizer is an important fall lawn care tip in Pennsylvania, that will help your lawn to “green up” better for next year. That’s because fall fertilizer, also called “winterizer,” allows for better root development over the winter and into the early spring. You’ll start spring off on a much better foot if you perform this task.

4. Fall Lawn Care for Weeds

Weed control is not just for spring, as some mistakenly believe. Paying attention to fall weed control is important. During the fall, weeds are sending materials to their root zone. This means that when you spray weeds in the early fall, that material will be more likely to translocate to the roots and kill the entire weed. Particularly tough-to-control weeds like ground ivy or violet can also be treated in the fall with different materials for a fully comprehensive approach.

5. Fall Mowing

Though you may be eager to stop mowing, it’s important that you don’t leave grass too long as it can make it more prone to snow mold. In Pennsylvania, the mowing season usually comes to a close around November, but that can obviously vary with the weather. Some other fall lawn care advice is to chop up and mulch your leaves in order to create natural compost, which will be absorbed by your lawn, feeding it important nutrients in the process.

6. Add Limestone

Lawns that struggle to have optimum color or vigor are often the result of acidic soils. This is a common concern in the Lehigh Valley and one that can be remedied with a limestone treatment, which is a service best performed in the fall. Adding limestone in the fall gives your lawn all of the winter season to absorb it and adjust its pH accordingly for the spring.

Following Through on Fall Lawn Care Advice

All 6 of these fall lawn care tasks are important steps to take to ensure that you have a beautiful lawn at your Lehigh Valley home. We know your lawn is important to you and that you don’t want to miss something important. Whether you’re tackling these tasks on your own, or you’re hiring someone to do them, following through on some of these fall lawn care tips will make a big difference in the overall health (and look) of your lawn.

The decisions that you make for your lawn are important whether it’s deciding which services to perform or which lawn care professional to hire. When you need some guidance—or some assistance with these services or others—Joshua Tree is here for you. Whether you have questions about what fall lawn care tasks are most important (and which can be skipped) or you’re interested in having us do them for you, we are at your service.

If you’d like to find out more about fall lawn care for your Allentown, Bethlehem, or Easton, PA home, feel free to contact us for a free consultation or give us a call at 610-365-2200.