Welcome to springtime! While Minnesota often deals with the winter elements through April, we’ll still start to see warmer weather and the grass peeking out of the snow. To prepare, there are important maintenance tasks for homeowners to keep in mind as their lawns start to thaw. This is also the time to plan out crabgrass control options. We recommend these to all of our customers.
Maintenance Tasks
After the spring thaw, some homeowners might notice their lawn still has a lot of leaves, twigs, or other debris left on it from last fall. Clearing those out will ensure your mower doesn’t accidentally get jammed and the grass has a chance to get access to sunlight to start growing. While it can be tempting to get the rake out to clean up this mess, we encourage less harsh methods. Raking can rip up live grass plants, which reduces the density of your lawn and leads to a longer recovery. Instead we recommend hand picking up twigs and debris. A blower is also a great way to move leaves off the lawn to a driveway where they can be picked up without disturbing the grass. It can also be exciting to start mowing but, like raking, you can do more damage if soils are wet. Let the lawn absorb the winter snow melt and firm up prior to mowing. Even if that means letting the lawn grow a little longer. Once the lawn has dried out, we recommend mowing once or twice a week throughout the year; however, it also depends on how fast the grass is growing, your average mowing height, and the effectiveness of your mower.
Crabgrass Control
Crabgrass is a summer annual grassy weed. It thrives in hot, dry weather and can choke out your lawn. Crabgrass has a hairy leaf surface that makes it hard to control once it is established. There are ways to control it, but it is more difficult. Fortunately, crabgrass does not survive our winters, so it dies out every fall and must re-grow from seed in the spring. There are preventative products that can stop crabgrass from germinating in the spring, thus preventing the problem in the summer. Applying a crabgrass preventative can be done any time in the spring but should be done prior to soils reaching a consistent 55 degrees. Often warm weather in the spring causes panic and we rush to get crabgrass preventer applied. Remember soils freeze during the winter and it takes a lot of warm days to get that soil temperature up. In the Twin Cities, soils generally reach a consistent 55 degrees in mid to late May. At bioLawn, we use specialized crabgrass preventative products that give us a little flexibility on soil temperatures, which allows us to provide our weed control guarantee. No matter how you decide to tackle crabgrass this season, the old adage applies: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. So make a plan to keep crabgrass at bay this season.
bioLawn is here to handle the majority of your lawn’s needs throughout the year. We schedule your services throughout the year and track your lawn’s progress to make any necessary adjustments. If a change is needed, such as an increase in pest control, then we will notify you. Our standard program involves 6 applications starting in the spring, so give us a call soon if you’d like to discuss how we can improve your lawn and an estimate for the services. bioLawn proudly serves the Twin Cities area and nurtures their lawns—responsibly.