Landscaping

8 Fall Landscaping Tips You Need to Know

06 Sep 2021
Fall landscaping tips

The summer season is quickly ending, and with fall around the corner, it’s time to prepare your yard for the fall and winter seasons. Many homesteaders see the fall season as an opportunity to get ready for the next spring.

When you consider the cool weather, mild to warm temperatures, and weeks of ample sunlight, it’ll be convenient to have access to landscaping accessories in Brampton. To get you started for your fall clean up, the contractors at Peel Exterior Maintenance would like to help you out. So, here are 8 fall landscaping tips to turn your home into an autumn oasis.

1. Aerate the lawn

Let’s face it, the summer time is when your lawn gets the most traffic. When you factor in the amount of people who walked on it and the kids who played on your lawn, the soil has experienced a lot of compacting.

As the process of compacting affects the soil to become firm, this prevents air, water, and nutrients from efficiently penetrating through the ground to the roots of your grass. In order to maintain your lawn’s health and its ability to breathe, aeration is most effective during the fall. Aerating helps freshly seeded and overseeded lawns grow properly.

If you decide to skip aerating your lawn in the fall, your grass can slowly die during the winter by creating brown patches when spring arrives. Since aerating requires specific tools for digging deeper into your soil, we recommend connecting with a professional landscaping contractor to do the job for you.

2. Fertilize the lawn

After your lawn has been aerated, it will be ready to absorb plenty of nutrients. It’s a good idea to add fertilizer one last time before the first snowfall, as it prepares your lawn for a healthy spring start. The benefit of fertilizing your lawn in the autumn is to have slow-releasing winterizing fertilizer cover your grass all winter long. Get the proper fertilizing application by contacting a professional landscaper to use a spreader to apply a layer of fertilizer over your entire lawn.

3. Mow the lawn

During the fall, continue to mow your lawn to keep the grass healthy and strong. It’s important to maintain the height of your grass in order to prevent pests, bacteria, and debris from taking over. Since prepping your lawn during the fall acts as preparation for spring, you want to avoid growing a matted lawn. This is when your grass grows too tall and collects unwanted pests and debris when the winter snow begins to melt.

In contrast, a lawn that is mowed too short during the fall limits its capabilities to absorb nutrients throughout winter. We suggest leaving it with a professional lawn care provider who can mow your lawn to the exact height to keep it healthy throughout the winter.

4. Replace mulch

Replacing mulch during the fall is good practice as it prevents weeds from growing in, locks in moisture in the soil, and protects against soil erosion. The main benefit of replacing mulch in the autumn is that it helps insulate plant roots from colder weather. The fall produces cool-to-warm temperatures in the soil and keeps organisms such as microbes and earthworms active well into the winter.

Since Canada has cold winters, soil eventually freezes during the coldest months from December to February. During this time, soil cycles endures the process of freezing and thawing in March and April. This pattern of freezing and thawing adds stress on your plant roots. The advantage of putting in new mulch during fall is that it helps moderate the temperature changes caused by freezing and thawing.

5. Pull weeds

Weeds can be a pest if you leave them alone because they don’t stop growing and can ruin your yard. While it might be tempting to skip weeding in the fall, we recommend getting a professional to do one big weeding clean-up because weeds take nutrients away from your grass. By having a professional landscaper perform one last weed clean-up before the winter, when springtime rolls around, you’ll have less to do when it comes to pulling out your weeds.

6. Plant new shrubs

Fall is the perfect season to plant new shrubs and trees, as the warm-to-cool temperatures keeps the soil warm enough to optimize root development of your new shrubs. Along with ideal soil conditions, regularly watering new-planted shrubs and plants is good practice in the fall before the ground freezes during the winter.

7. Rake leaves

Raking leaves in the fall is inevitable. However, if you decide not to take care of it, leaving piles of leaves on your lawn can actually damage the grass. By neglecting to rake leaves, your lawn becomes blocked from receiving adequate sunlight, thus preventing it from growing properly. Additionally, raking leaves during the autumn is less physically taxing due to the leaves being dry and not wet, heavy, or dirty. If you can’t get around to raking leaves, contact your local landscaper to do one full raking sweep on your property.

8. Turn off the irrigation system

Turning off your irrigation system in the fall is something you shouldn’t forget because once the temperatures drop, all the pipes can suffer damage. If you’re not exactly sure how to turn off your irrigation system, contact a professional landscaper who can drain all the water and shut it off properly to prevent it from freezing in the winter months.

Maintaining your yard in the fall might seem like a big task. Think of it as an investment, though, as you don’t want your hard work during the summer to go to waste. By contacting our team at Peel Exterior Maintenance, we can assist you with fall landscaping preparation that will ensure that your lawn and entire yard will be kept optimized throughout the off-season.

At Peel Exterior Maintenance, we offer landscaping accessories in Brampton, Ontario to care for your fall landscaping needs. Contact us today to learn more on how we can help you prepare and to receive a free program evaluation. Call us at 1-888-290-1216 or contact us here.