Looking after your Lawn in Winter
After a long absence due to the start of term at university,
I returned home last weekend to see my family. It was also the perfect time to
tidy up the lawn before the worst of the winter begins. Not many people are
aware of some key steps that need to be done to keep your lawn healthy during
the winter, affectionately known as “putting your garden to bed”. In this post
I’ll cover the most important (and surprisingly simple) things that you can do
to keep your garden healthy.
Mowing
You should really try to not mow your lawn at all over the
winter period. An important exception is if you get a period of unusually warm
combined with damp weather, similar to the weather we had last week (around
Halloween), with late October temperatures as high as 23oC. Even
under these circumstances, you only want to take about a third to a quarter of
the growth off, leaving the grass at a height of at least 2 – 3 inches.
Feeding
You should also try to not feed your lawn at all in the
winter months. If the lawn is fed, then it will start to grow to heights which
it can’t sustain in low levels of sunlight, causing it to die. The best is to
just eave the lawn to its own devices, as bits of decaying leaves should
provide enough nutrients to sustain the grass.
Objects/leaves on the grass
With grass it is important to try to keep it exposed to
light as much as possible, and this is especially important in winter with low
levels of sunlight. Garden furniture like tables, trampolines and children’s
play houses (for example) will all need to be regularly moved around to give
all of your lawn good sunlight exposure. Leaves on the lawn will also need to
be regularly raked away. If left for too long, the grass won’t get enough
sunlight and so will die. Although in the summer months grass takes very little
time to re-grow, grass that dies in the winter months won’t re-grow until at
least the autumn, leaving your lawn looking brown and patchy for the spring and
summer.
Jack's final thoughts and recommendations
After the winter months, the first time I give my lawn a first
light mow, taking only about half of the grass off, in early March. Make sure
that you do it on a dry day, and don’t go overboard with the amount of grass
you take off. Give the grass a little bit of time to get going, and then give it
a cut about 2 weekends after. You should then continue to cut it about twice a
month. I hope this guide helps you prepare your grass for the winter ahead, and
will leave you with a healthy lawn next spring.