Follow this lawn care schedule: A seasonal reference guide for a healthy yard

Key points

• Use a lawncare schedule to improve your turfgrass with seasonal tasks.
• Proper lawn care includes tool and equipment maintenance.
• You don’t need a ton of chemicals to have a healthy lawn.

You, too, can be a grass guru — if you follow a lawn care schedule. Planning ahead can take the guesswork out of your landscaping to-do list and eliminate unpleasant surprises, such as bare spots. When it comes to turfgrass tasks, you need to be one season ahead.

The mantra “a failure to plan is planning to fail” is surprisingly apt when it comes to lawn care. 

Without a plan made in the offseason, you’re reacting to things instead of proactively planning and taking care of things beforehand. “This is going to lead to more fertilizer than you need, more pesticides than you need and, frankly, a yard that doesn’t look as good,” said Brandon Haley, vice president of grounds management at Clemson University.

But whether you’ve cared about turfgrass for ages or your interest in do-it-yourself (DIY) landscaping is new, embracing a lawn care schedule will help guide you to success.

What should a lawn care program include?

Certain lawn care tasks are universally applicable regardless of the time of year or the type of grass you have. Mowing, fertilizing, grass seed application, aeration, weed control and watering all belong in your lawn care program. 

Your lawn care program should also include regular review and maintenance of your mower blades and other landscaping equipment. 

What’s the best year-round lawn care schedule?

Don’t wait for the dogwood trees to start blooming to kick off your lawn care calendar. Each U.S. region experiences seasons at its own pace — meaning there is no one specific time of year to get on a lawn care schedule. For some, embarking on lawn care tasks means getting out into your yard even while it’s still jacket weather. 

To better tailor your lawn needs, you need to know what sort of grass you have on your property. Cool-season grasses, such as tall fescue and ryegrass, grow in the spring and fall, whereas warm-season grasses will grow in the summer. 

A better understanding will also help you plan other maintenance tasks such as aeration and how it can impact growing conditions.

Haley recommended reaching out to your local cooperative extension program to learn more about your specific region and microclimate and how that correlates with your lawn’s needs.

Here’s a quick summary of what seasonal lawn care should look like.

Spring

Early spring, when soil temperature hits 55 degrees Fahrenheit for five to seven days, your yard will start to come back to life — and so will the weeds. But don’t go crazy with weed killer just yet. 

Create a weed-control plan that entails preemergent, a type of herbicide that prevents seedlings from germinating, as you tackle crabgrass, dandelions and other weeds.

Haley advised implementing lawn fertilizer before handling any major weed control problems. That’s because clearing away a large amount of weeds where turfgrass is struggling to thrive will only leave bare spots ripe for weeds to return and encourage soil erosion. “I’m going to push growth with fertilizer, and then I will start to attack the weeds,” Haley said of a yard overwhelmed with weeds.

For a normal amount of weeds, you can use synthetic fertilizers that contain preemergent herbicide. “I would absolutely recommend if people did no other chemical application on their yard, the spring preemergent is by far the most important that will stop most of your weeds in the summer when your grass is most actively growing,” Haley explained. “That’s gonna be your biggest bang for your buck.”

Another strategy could be overseeding your lawn to crowd out space for weeds, but Haley thinks that’s a strategy better deployed in the fall because “your grass will get really, really thick in late spring because the seed will germinate, but then it’s going to die out some in the summer” since not enough time passed to establish root growth.

As your turfgrass lawn growth continues and it’s late spring, you’ll want to start mowing. Frequency depends on the type of grass you have and the recommended length for that species. 

Cool-season grasses often need mowing roughly once a week in the fall and early spring months, whereas warm-season grasses will require the same in the late spring and summer months.

In the spring, you probably don’t need to do much watering — about 15 minutes a few times a week, depending on how much rainfall you’ll receive in your region this time of year. Check your sprinklers or irrigation system to ensure all are working properly.

Summer

Yards with warm-season grass could use fertilizer, but not cool-season grass since it isn’t the time of year that it is actively growing.

Keep up with the mowing schedule you established in the spring. “Summer shouldn’t be a time that you’re going crazy with your turf, you should be enjoying it,” Haley said. 

Leave turfgrass clippings to break down and boost your soil. Janna Bradley, cofounder of the Landscape Management Network, suggested that you go over the clippings with your lawn mower to cut them into smaller pieces. “It just reintroduces all the nutrients back into the ground,” she added. While it’s not mulching per se, it’s beneficial.

Should your cool-season grasses go dormant during drought in the summer, stop mowing. “Leave it alone if your grass is going dormant due to natural weather,”  Haley said. 

You will want to turn on your irrigation system and sprinklers. Your lawn needs about an inch of water per week, including rainfall. Aim for longer, less frequent watering cycles in the early morning to prevent evaporation. 

But how do you know when your lawn got about an inch of water? There are a few ways to check, including sticking your finger into the soil to see if it’s dry and turning on the tap if it is.

Bradley also recommended setting out a bowl or cup on the lawn and turning on your sprinkler until it reaches about an inch full. “It might take 22 minutes, or something, to put about an inch of water in that cup,” she said. Once you know, set the timer accordingly.

Fall

Early fall for many parts of the U.S. signals cooler daytime temperatures and the threat of frost. Your turfgrass will soon transition to dormancy — the period when the grass appears browned, dead or otherwise not growing — but before the frost comes, Haley suggested applying fall weed prevention.

To minimize your use of herbicide chemicals and subsequent nutrient runoff into local waterways, remember that the “best weed prevention is dense and healthy turf,” Haley said. 

That means “overseeding” your lawn, or applying more seed to a patch of turfgrass. He recommended overseeding in the early fall. “You can do it in spring, but a lot of times [the seed] doesn’t live through the summer because the roots haven’t been established, so you’re not going to get as good of a germination rate.”

You should also be making the most of your fall leaves. Shred them to use as mulch for your garden beds or leave them where they fall to provide a habitat for wildlife.

Depending on your leaf coverage, however, Bradley cautioned against leaving too much foliage on your turfgrass lawn. In some parts of the country, certain trees can drop “two or three inches of leaves,” she noted, which could be a problem since too much leaf coverage could suffocate the turfgrass or lead to fungal diseases.

Winter

The best thing to do with your lawn during the winter dormancy period is to leave it alone, Haley explained. When you mow turfgrass during winter, “you’ve allowed colder air to get to the roots, and you’ll actually run the risk of hurting it,” Haley said. 

If you have ornamental or native grasses that grow taller, however, Haley suggested keeping them at length for some visual interest in the winter months but trimming them back before they begin to resprout in early spring.

The next best thing you can do in the winter is to undertake any forgotten maintenance of your lawn mower blades and other landscaping equipment. Haley recommended sharpening them every month or two, although he noted that commercial operators will sharpen mower blades more often than that. 

You also want to test the batteries of any electric tools or change the oil of any fossil fuel-based equipment. And as more states and cities ban the use of fossil fuel-based lawn mowing and landscaping equipment, it’s also worth taking this time to check if you’re in compliance with local ordinances and state law.

What’s next?

Creating and following a lawn care schedule essentially boils down to this: You need to learn when your climate is supposed to change and be proactive with lawn maintenance a season ahead of time. You don’t need to use a lot of chemicals to have a healthy lawn. Not only will this reduce your environmental impact it will also help minimize lawn care costs. 

Review how much turfgrass you actually use and whether a different sort of landscaping could fill out the space with less maintenance while also increasing the biodiversity of your property. “I would not have more lawn than you truly need,” Haley said.

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