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 23^oC. 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.