Making Your Home Beautiful

A sure sign that winter is here to stay can be found in the plants of your yard; they drop their leaves, lose their blossoms, and otherwise shrivel back into themselves until the sun starts shining again next spring. But that doesn't mean that you can take a few months off of maintaining your yard and expect everything to look great come March—so if you're wondering what a few tips and tricks for maintaining your yard during winter could be, then here's what you need to know.

Man the Lawn

When the air starts to turn chilly, your first point of attention should be towards maintaining your green, healthy lawn. Make sure that you (gradually) cut it as short as possible before the freezes set in so that animals can't burrow in the tall grass and kill the grass from its roots.

You should also, somewhat counterintuitively, fertilize your lawn now; cool season grasses (which dominate North America except for in the American South) such as bluegrass, ryegrass, and fescue should be fertilized in late fall or early winter to ensure that the roots are fed and healthy until spring.

Catch the Debris

Fall comes with a lot of debris in your yard, from fallen leaves and twigs to Halloween candy wrappers strewn about in every nook and cranny. You should make sure to clear your yard of any debris, organic or otherwise, before snow starts to cover it up. Not only will this make your yard look a lot cleaner, but it can also ensure that you avoid damp pockets of debris creating moldy holes, which will definitely mar the look of your yard come spring.

This debris includes weeds, which will be easy to spot as your yard dulls in color over the cold season, as weeds tend to shoot up green regardless of the chill outside. If you spot-treat these weeds now (which can pop up in the unlikeliest of places, from your tree beds to the cracks in your driveway), you won't have to wrestle with fully entrenched weeds during the warm seasons.

Watch the Traffic

It's always tempting to circumvent your driveway by tramping up your yard (especially in winter, when it might already be covered with a thick blanket of snow), but resist the urge; traffic on frozen grass can actually kill off the crowns of your grass, which leads to ugly bare patches once the snow melts and the weather heats up again. Not only are these bare patches unsightly, but they're also prime real estate for weeds and crabgrass—two things you definitely don't want to deal with in the spring.

Contact a landscape maintenance company for additional advice.