Putting the Lawn to Bed

Yesterday I dragged the last of the containers, all umpteen of them, into the garage for the winter. This is usually the last big hurrah for my fall season, but we are enjoying an extended fall again this year and now it looks as though I may have to mow the grass one more time. The big question for the last mowing is always "How high should I mow it?" In my zone 6 life there was no such question. The grass was never covered by a long-term snow blanket. Here we must prepare for one. Grass that is too long may mat and mold beneath the snow. If it is too short, and we don't get an adequate snow cover the grass crowns may be killed by the cold. It's a gamble either way.

The whole lawn thing exasperates me. Like tender roses, lawns require work that I consider in the chore classification. However, we get so many questions about lawns at work that I know that lots of people do care about the subject. Our cooler climate makes the European lawn grasses easier to grow than in the hot, humid south, but there are still a lot of variables. Reading the directions on the back of a national brand of lawn fertilizer or in a general gardening book might lead you to think that there is a one-size-fits-all answer, but there isn't.

The mowing is not the only question to address. What you do for the lawn now can set the tone for its season next year. So what do you need to do? Well, what kind of lawn do you have? That's not a trick question. There are high maintenance lawns and low maintenance lawns. Low maintenance lawns are those made up of a mixture of lawn grasses such as rye grass, fescue and bluegrass. Bluegrass alone is a high maintenance lawn. It requires more careful attention to fertilization, moisture and mowing practices than a mixed grass lawn. Now again, what kind of lawn do you have? Let's see how your answer tells you what to do for it now...

For either kind of lawn, now is the best time of the year to fertilize. Statistics show that lawns fertilized in the late fall green up much faster in the spring than those that aren't. However, this late it is best to use an organic fertilizer such as Milorganite or Ringer's Restore. They are broken down over winter by the soil organisms to provide the food as needed, not as a water-soluble dump that may be leached away quickly if conditions aren't ideal. The rate should not exceed the equivalent of one pound of nitrogen per thousand square feet. This feeding is usually the only one given to a low maintenance lawn though the high maintenance ones usually get four spread over the growing season.

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