Fall clean up prepares your yard for the long sleep of winter. Picking up leaves and debris now means you will not have to deal with a soggy mess of deteriorated plant material in spring. Wet, dead plant material attracts mold and smothers whatever plant life it is sitting on. Here is a list of things to clean up around your yard that will prevent anything you want living from dying, and give it a great start in spring.

Don’t Let Leaves Lie

Leaves, when allowed to build up on a lawn or mat down around planting beds, can smother the grass and perennials under them during fall and winter. Raking and carting away leaves helps keep your lawn and plants breathing free. Leaves are likely not the only plant debris in your yard that needs to go. Any dead plant material should be removed from beds so the plants you want to keep won’t be stifled.           

Trim and Cut

Depending on the specific plant, cutting perennials back to ground level will make for tidy-looking beds during the winter. Some ornamental grasses can be left untrimmed to add winter interest to the landscape. Dead material, such as dead heads or limbs, should also be cut or removed from your perennials.

Mow Grass

Cutting the grass a little shorter than you do in the summer, especially if your lawn has had fungal issues, minimizes damage done to your grass by snow. Shorter grass stands stiffer and straighter, and will not be flattened by the weight of snow. It is also harder for debris such as leaves to get caught in short grass; leaves will blow across it, leaving you with less work. We recommend cutting no shorter than 2 and a half inches, but not taller than 3. 

Fall Fertilizer

Laying down a mild, low-nitrogen fertilizer will promote root growth when plants fall asleep for the winter. It’s like putting your plants to bed with a snack; they will come out of winter wide awake and ready for spring.

Eagleson Landscape Company provides fall clean up services to make your landscape tidy. Contact us at 317-997-4803 or send us an email.