After the flowering season in summer, the trees are covered with beautiful and colorful leaves. This beauty is short-lived because autumn soon arrives and the leaves wrap around your lawn. While young people love to walk through the leaves, they can make your property look shabby. They also create a good environment for pests to thrive. With harsh winter upon us, this becomes the perfect time to do a thorough fall cleanup and prepare your property for a cold, snowy winter. The following content also has some reference value for raised garden beds.
Why you need to clean up in Fall
You may be wondering why you need to clean up, but your entire property will be covered in snow in a short period of time.
Seemingly harmless leaf fall creates several problems:
1. They cover your lawn grass, deprive it of oxygen, and suffocate it
2. The leaves also cover other plants and flowers, depriving them of sunlight. When this happens, you start noticing brown patches on them
3. The leaves lock water to the underlying plant, which promotes fungal growth
4. Leaf piles can encourage spring pets, including moles, mice, and voles
A thorough cleanup ensures that your landscape is prepared for the dormant winter months. It also makes it easier for your lawn and garden beds to rejuvenate in the spring. However, autumn cleanup is more than just cleaning up dead leaves. Here's a comprehensive fall cleanup to-do list.
Leaf cleanup
Deciduous is organic and provides shelter for pollinators during the winter months. Nevertheless, a thick layer of leaves blocks air and sunlight from reaching the meadows and vegetation below. It can also promote disease growth.
Similarly, if some leaves become sick, the spores re-infect other leaves in the spring.
Once you've gathered all the leaves in one central location, consider composting them to feed your lawn and garden later.
Aerate and weed the lawn
For properties with lawns, thatch and aeration must be done in the fall.
Aeration is the perforation of soil to reduce soil compaction. Compaction is when the soil is too dense for nutrients, water and air to move between its particles.
When you aerate the soil, you create small holes where air, nutrients, and water penetrate and reach the base layer.
Another thing you may notice is yellow-brown grass lying under freshly grown grass. This is called thatch.
When thatch accumulates, it prevents the base layer from getting enough nutrients and water.
You can use nails or plug aerators to aerate the soil. A rake can remove the grass of the lawn well.
Winter your garden
This is another key part of the fall yard cleanup. Wintering your garden is better resistant to winter.
1. First, check your garden and garden beds for diseased vegetables and flowers and remove them. You can discard or bury them somewhere in the house, where they should remain for at least a year. This ensures that they do not infect other plants.
2. For tender perennials, annuals and tropical plants, wait until after the first frost. When the flowers are limping, remove diseased plant fragments and discard them.
3. Do not use any diseased leaves to make compost, as doing so may lead to reinfection.
Clean drains
Depending on the position and height of the tree, there may also be leaves in the gutter. These can fill your drains and stop runoff when winter comes. When the drains fail to drain, ice dams form, crushing them.
This can lead to mold, rot, and even a drop in the gutter, causing even greater damage.
Use a leaf blower to remove all leaves. You can also remove smaller leaf and branch fragments along the drain.
Fertilize the lawn
Summer is stressful for lawns. Autumn provides the perfect setting for lawn rejuvenation.
However, while lower temperatures in autumn naturally help your lawn do just that, fertilizing at this time helps with the process.
Find a good winter fertilizer and apply it before it gets too cold or freezing.
If you plan to sow your lawn as well, make sure to weed it as well to give new grass a chance to thrive.
You can safely use excellent natural and organic herbicide ingredients today.
Compost healthy leaves
Leftover leaves, grass clippings, and other vegetable waste are excellent organic, nutrient-dense compost.
To compost, you need brown, green, moisture, and air. Green vegetables include grass clippings, peels, annual weeds, and vegetable waste.
Brown is deciduous leaves, wood chips, straw and sawdust.
You want 2 to 3 more brown than green. Then you mix them with water and let the mixture cook into organic compost.
Avoid putting any diseased leaves or grass clippings in the pile.
Prune rogue branches
If you miss some dangling, sick, or otherwise damaged branches in the summer, you should take care of them at this time.
The last thing you want is for branches to fall on roofs, windows, and terraces during snowy and windy winters.
Not only can these cause some widespread damage, but they can also harm your family members.
Put your tools together
Drain all irrigation systems, hoses, and fountains, as the retained water may cause some damage to them.
Also drain the gas from the mower and lubricate the parts that need it.
You will also need to clean, dry, and lubricate all your tools before storing them in an area of your home that will remain dry and shielded during the winter months.
As you can see, autumn cleanup isn't just about making your property look tidy. It protects your lawn, garden and garden beds and ensures that your plants thrive after winter is over.
Some measures to protect the gutters can also help prevent damage to your home. While this list may seem daunting at first, it's not. Break down tasks and schedule related tasks on similar days. Once you start, the cleanup will be faster before you know it.
If you need extra help because you are short on time or because you have a large property to manage, do not hesitate to seek help from a professional landscaping company. They can perform fall cleanup for you so that you can take advantage of the extra time for more important tasks.
