Putting your Landscape to Bed for the Winter

Summer is just a fond memory now and the nights are getting longer and cooler. It is time to prepare your landscape for the coming winter. There are several things that can be done to give your landscape a better chance of surviving the cold, blustery winter. Fall is also a good time to improve several landscape components.

Let’s consider the turf areas first. Fall is an excellent time to aerate, re-seed and lime existing lawn areas. Aeration is the process of removing small plugs of thatch and soil from the lawn with a machine. Aeration reduces thatch accumulation by mixing soil (the plugs) with the thatch which permit soil organisms to reduce the thatch accumulation. Aeration also enhances the water and fertilizer uptake not to mention the improved root mass development in the space where the plug was removed. Having a better root system enhances heat and drought stress tolerance and that is a benefit to every property, irrigated or not. While aeration can be done in the spring or fall, consider doing it this fall if you haven’t aerated in the last year or so.

Aerating removes small plugs of thatch and soil from lawn.

September and October is a good time to strengthen up any weak areas of turf around the property. The two favorite methods are slice seeding and over seeding. Slice seeding is planting grass in a slot cut in the existing turf. A machine with several cutting wheels (like the cutting wheel on your can opener) slice into the ground about two inches. While the ground slice is still “open”, the machine drops seeds into the sliced open area. After the machine passes over, the open slice will relax and come back together. The end result is little “corn rows” of new grass in the existing turf. Strengthening the turf is a practice that should be done routinely to areas which are weak. Having new grass mixed with older grass is a good way to develop a solid turf area.

Overseeding is where new seed is broadcast over the designated lawn area. This works best in conjunction with topdressing or plug aeration as just described. To me, aeration and overseeding is the better procedure since it provides the aeration benefits to the turf area in addition to being a preparation for the overseeding. Fall seedlings don’t have a lot of weed competition which is problematic in the springtime. The soil is still warm in the fall yet the weather is not blistering hot to dehydrate the young plants. Grass root systems continue to grow and strengthen right up to the ground freezing point so the turf has a chance to become established over the winter. Next spring you will be ahead of the game with grass which has had a chance to establish itself.

New England soil is notoriously acidic and chances are good that your soil would benefit from a lime application. To be sure, have your landscaper do a soil test. Lime is not like fertilizer where you see the benefit in just a matter of days. Lime absorption is a slow process and takes up to six months to change the acidic value of the soil. The soil doesn’t absorb lime in excess of 50 pounds per 100 sq. ft whereas the soil test may indicate lime is needed in the 60 to 80 pound range. In this case, split the requirement in two and apply lime in both the spring and the fall to meet the total requirement. Lime will adjust the pH of the soil which enhances the nutrient absorption for the turf. Lawns with the proper pH will have a more lush look than those whose pH is off scale.

Antidesiccant spray is important for the broadleaf evergreens like rhododendrons, boxwood, holly, and mountain laurel. Winter winds and sun extract moisture from the leaves via a process called transpiration. Once the roots freeze there is no way for the plant to resupply the leaves with moisture lost by transpiration and they begin looking dry and scorched. Antidesiccant spray provides a protective waxy-like covering on the leaves to slow down the transpiration process. This antidesiccant application may well make the difference between a stressed plant surviving the winter or not.

Tying up arborvitae and yews in foundation beds is another important procedure that is often overlooked when preparing for winter. While nothing can eliminate snow damage from a big storm, tying up these foundation plants will greatly improve the survival rate when heavy snows come. One needs only compare the cost to replace several arborvitae that have been split due to snow loading against the cost to tie them in the fall to see the benefit.

If you have evergreens such as yews or arborvitae near a roadway that are subject to salt splash during the winter, you should consider having your landscaper wrap them in burlap. The burlap wrap will provide an absorption barrier and reduce the amount of salt that reaches the plant leaves and thereby causing damage. Again, if no other motive works, consider the cost to replace the plants versus the cost to do the wrapping.

Has your property been subject to salt damage in the springtime? Putting down sand/salt on the roadways and ice melt crystals on the walkways is pretty standard. Depending on the severity of the winter, salts can accumulate in the lawn areas along curbs and walkways and the grass will not green up in the spring. There are two solutions to this problem. The first solution is to convince your snow plowing contractor to use an environmentally friendly de-icer (they are available and work well). Failing that, have your snow plowing contractor or landscaper apply gypsum along the edges of all curbs and walkways. Gypsum looks like lime and when put on the turf allows the salts to leach away rather than attach to the turf roots. We have used gypsum and it greatly reduces the damage from winter salts.

The important rule in preparing the landscape for winter is to take action! The landscape is a living entity and most procedures (especially preventative procedures) are time sensitive. A common problem in dealing with condominium landscape is reaching a decision point in a timely manner. I can’t tell you the number of times that the committee decision making process took too long and the effective window to execute the time sensitive job was closed. For instance, getting an order from the committee to spray antidesiccant in late November is most likely too late since the ambient temperature needs to be at least 45° for the antidesiccant material to flow and adhere to the leaves. If your landscaper tells you he needs to have a decision by a particular date, you need to do everything in your power to have a decision by that date.