The approach of winter typically signals an end of mowing and an end to green grass. With the weather cooling, it’s time to turn our thoughts to winter lawn and yard care tasks.
Most lawns in Texas are planted with warm-season grasses, which go dormant over the winter. Though your lawn will turn brown when the grass is dormant, it is not dead. Your winter lawn will benefit from a few maintenance tasks. For most of these, it’s best to do them before the grass goes dormant or to put them on hold until next spring.
1) Don’t Aerate Until Spring
Aerating is often recommended as a late summer or early fall task. That’s not the best time to aerate a Texas lawn, though. Aerating in the spring allows grass to recover more quickly because it is actively growing. Since warm-season grass goes dormant over winter, hold off on aerating until it starts growing again in the spring. When you are ready to aerate, a mechanical core aerator is the best equipment for this job.
2) Fertilize One More Time
You should fertilize warm-season grasses during their growing season in the late spring, summer, and early fall to prepare them for dormancy. A healthy lawn with adequate nutrients will develop a strong root system, which will help your grass overwinter well and green up more quickly in the spring.
It’s up to you whether you use commercially available lawn fertilizer or a natural alternative like compost to fertilize the lawn. Both of these supply needed nutrients for the grass. If you’re using chemical fertilizers, be careful to follow package directions so you don’t over-fertilize and “burn” the grass before it goes dormant.
3) Decide If You’ll Overseed
Some southern homeowners like to overseed their warm-season lawns with cool-season grass to keep the lawn green over winter. The best seed for this is ryegrass, which germinates quickly and dies in the spring so it will not compete with your regular lawn grass. To overseed a lawn, begin planting about 4-6 weeks before the first killing frost date. Before overseeding, it is a good idea to apply compost to the lawn.
There are a few downsides to overseeding. If the annual grass grows well and the winter is mild, you will probably need to mow a few times over the winter. Until the ryegrass dies as the weather warms, it will also compete with warm-season grasses coming out of dormancy and may delay warm-season grass greening up in the spring. To combat this, the ryegrass will need to be mowed short in the spring until the permanent lawn begins to grow again. After the ryegrass dies, you can resume regular lawn maintenance.
4) Monitor Watering Carefully
If you’re watering your lawn, cut back after the temperature drops in late fall. Since warm-season grass goes dormant, you probably won’t need to water unless it’s an unusually warm and dry winter. If the weather is warm with no measurable precipitation for about two weeks, water the lawn for about 15 minutes no more than once a week. That small amount of water will help prevent a dormant warm-season lawn from dying.
If you have bluegrass in your lawn or you overseeded, a winter lawn of cool-season grass will need water, but not as much as your spring and summer lawn. Just keep an eye on the lawn and water if the color starts to look dull. You can also tell a lawn needs water if you walk across it and see your footprints. Well-watered lawn grass will spring back quickly, making footprints disappear soon after you walk on the grass.
5) Clean Out the Irrigation System
Homeowners in North Texas often have an irrigation or sprinkler system. To prevent damage from freezing, make sure you winterize the sprinkler system before the weather gets cold. Start by shutting off the water going to your sprinklers, then get the water out of the system.
How you get the water out depends on your system. Some drain manually, others automatically, and others have connections for an air compressor to blow the water out. If you’re not sure which method your system uses, consult a professional for help so you don’t damage your irrigation system. Once the water’s all drained, cover faucets and sprinklers to protect them from cold damage.
6) Remove Weeds
To help prevent annual weeks from taking over the winter lawn, apply a pre-emergent herbicide. Make sure you apply it before temperatures at night consistently drop below 60°F (typically late September or early October).
Even if you do apply a pre-emergent herbicide, you’ll still need to keep an eye out for weeds that could still grow throughout the winter. These weeds should be removed by pulling or spot application of an herbicide on a warm day. Attention to this task, along with making sure the lawn doesn’t dry out too much, will help keep your lawn healthy and prepare it for regular maintenance tasks in the spring such as mowing and fertilization.
7) Winterize and Store Equipment
Unless you’ve overseeded, you won’t be using the mower, trimmer, edger, and other lawn care power equipment over the winter. You’ll want to winterize these tools and make sure they’re stored properly so they’ll be ready for you to use them next year. Similarly, taking time to winterize hand tools like shovels and water hoses will help ensure they stay nice for years.
For cutting and digging hand tools, sand off any rust spots and oil them before storage. For water hoses, coil them up and store them flat. When winterizing gasoline-powered tools, either drain the fuel tanks or fill them with stabilized fuel. Clean the tools, then store them in a dry place protected from frost. For more information, check out “The Basics of Winterizing Your Tools.”
8) Get Winter Equipment Ready
There are some types of lawn equipment that you probably won’t want to put away all winter. Chainsaws and blowers often see use during the winter months, so make sure when you winterize these tools it’s easy to get them out and use them.
If you plan to store them for just part of the winter, use stabilized fuel instead of draining the tanks for gasoline-powered equipment. For battery-powered equipment, just make sure that you’re storing the batteries separately from the equipment and that you check the manufacturer’s guidelines for what temperature to store batteries.
9) Be Careful With The Chainsaw
If you’re going to cut with a chainsaw this winter, there are a few extra things to do to get ready for that. First, drain the bar and chain oil and replace it with a thinner, winter-grade lubricant. Some chainsaws have a winter/summer shutter. If yours does, switch to the winter setting when the temperature is under 40 degrees.
Frozen wood is hard to cut, so you’ll need to sharpen or replace the chains more frequently than usual. When sharpening your chains in the winter decrease the saw chain’s filing angle by five degrees. That change helps improve winter cutting and decrease wear and tear on the guide bar and cutting chain.
10) Keep The Lawn Clean
For lawns in areas with snow, homeowners have to worry about piled-up snow on the lawn compacting soil and possibly causing mold growth. While snow in Dallas is rare, you should still be aware of a few other things that can contribute to compacted soil and lawn disease.
Parking cars on the lawn and running heavy equipment over it in the winter can lead to compacted soil and damaged grass. Try to minimize traffic on the lawn, especially if it’s muddy. Aerating in the spring will help take care of any soil compaction that does happen. To help prevent disease, make sure to clean up fallen leaves, branches, and other debris quickly. If all goes well, you should have very few (if any) patches of grass to replant and repair in the spring.
Need New Equipment or a Tune-Up?
Winter is a great time to catch up on equipment maintenance before spring starts. If you’ve been putting off a tune-up, need replacement parts, or have equipment that’s just not working right come see us at Richardson Saw & Lawnmower. Our service department is usually less busy in the winter than we are in the spring, so now’s a good time to get ahead of the spring rush.
If you’re in the market for a new blower, chainsaw, or other power equipment to use over the winter, come see us for that as well. We’ll be happy to help you find just the right tool for your winter yard care jobs.
