This Fall Lawn Care Checklist Will Keep Your Yard In Shape

With summer cooling off and winter just off the horizon, fall is a critical time for lawn care. Many think of spring as the season of garden-tending and lawn maintenance, but without care and foresight in the fall, spring groundskeeping might not cut it to keep up a healthy, flourishing landscape. Considering upkeep, cool weather prep, and landscaping problems typical for the season, we’ve compiled a manual for successful fall lawns. 

Informed by experienced gardeners, landscape designers, horticulture experts, and residential landscapers, this list prioritizes the needs of the season, including busting some fall lawn care myths. Some folks may think that a nip in the air means the end of watering and mowing, but these landscaping professionals assure us that this would be doing our lawns a disservice. So, forget what you thought you knew. Stick to our fall lawn care checklist for a well-sustained lawn to last through winter and flourish come spring.

Keep in mind that depending on where you live and your climate, your lawn's needs may shift. Consult a local lawn care expert for more information targeted to your area.

Time Your Pruning

Don’t prune while plants are still actively blooming. Instead, wait until later in the fall when blooms fade and fall, says Mackenzie Chris, branch manager of residential landscaping at Southern Botanical. Once a shrub’s blooms fade and leaves drop, Chris advises trimming down dead blooms and making height adjustments with haste before the plants can fully go dormant. 

Depending on your locale’s weather, the timing on this may vary. In Dallas, where Chris looks after local lawns, she says that blooms may hold out past August or even through October. That's when you should take your break. In landscape architect John Russell's stomping grounds of Birmingham, Alabama, that stopping point usually happens in August. 

“For most things, stop pruning at the end of August until all of the leaves drop. Don't prune evergreen or deciduous stuff after the end of August,” says landscape architect John Russell. “Once the leaves are down, you can pretty much prune anything.”

Fertilize Your Lawn

“Despite what people may think, you actually do want to feed your plants before they go dormant. It helps them go to sleep before the cold weather comes in,” says Chris who begins fertilizing in September. “That also includes fertilizing your turf as we're getting in prepping for those colder months.”

Once the cold rolls in, there's no need to fertilize again until spring. Russell uses tax day as his marker to begin feeding again.

Plant When It’s Wet

If you live in an area when fall means more rain, take that as your cue to get to planting, especially for large trees and shrubs, says landscape designer Peter Falkner with Chris in agreement. This gives trees and shrubs time to soak in the water and take root to give them a better chance to brave the winter. Even more threatening than the cold, is the fierce heat of Southerner summers. If planted in fall, well-situated plants will be more established and better prepared to survive next summer.

Seed Cool Grasses

“Seed cool season grasses when the leaves start to change color,” recommends Russell. Cool season grasses include Fescues, Bentgrass, Ryegrasses, and Kentucky Bluegrass.

Don’t Stop Watering

Don’t be fooled into thinking that falling leaves means you can abandon your watering efforts. Watering is still very important, especially for young plants. 

“Watering after planting is important,” says Russell. “Nothing is no-maintenance or low-maintenance, and you've got to water every day for a couple of weeks after you put something, like a shrub, in.” From there, he says you can cut back to watering shrubs and trees every other day, and then about twice a week for 30 minutes at a time.

A similar schedule goes for newly seeded grasses. Chris offers her watering instructions: “Once you throw out that seed, you'll have to keep it wet for at least the first two to three weeks. That typically means watering three to four times a day for short periods.”

Trim Grass

We’ve heard it said that there’s no need to mow in the fall, but this is a falsehood. Keep mowing, but rather than a shear, adjust the settings on your lawn mower to facilitate a trim. Chris recommends taking about an inch off your grass every week to help new seeds germinate.

Clean Up Mowing Debris

“Make sure that when you're mowing, you bag all that debris. You don't want that to build up on the lawn in the wintertime,” Chris says. “You want to make sure you keep the lawn as clean as possible to alleviate issues like brown patches that can happen in the dormant season. The cleaner you can keep it in the fall, the healthier it'll be.”

Mulch Before The Leaves Drop

For nearly every kind of mulch, early fall is the time to get to mulching. Pine straw for example, should be re-laid twice a year and can be updated in autumn, and Russell says that autumn is the best time of year to update shredded hardwood mulch too. One mulch to avoid in the fall however, is pine bark mulch. Russell advises against using pine bark mulch because it may float away in the fall rain.

As for timing, the reason to mulch for the season before leaves get in the way is purely logistical. “If you do put mulch out just as leaves drop, be aware that when you're removing leaves, you will potentially be picking up mulch as well,” says Chris.

Clear Leaves

If let be, fallen leaves can smother your freshly planted grass. Prevent this from happening by raking leaves up and keeping the law tidy. Another option is to use a mulching mower to shred leaves into a substance that can actually be helpful for the lawn.

Refresh Fire Pits

After a summer spent roasting marshmallows and entertaining outdoor guests around the fire, it’s time to give fire pits a good wash. Start by removing ash and debris, scrubbing the interior, and letting it dry. Then your fire pit will be clean and ready to warm you up once the fall weather takes a turn for the cooler.

Take Inventory For Spring

Don’t wait until the spring to start considering your garden and landscaping plans for the warm weather months. Begin in the fall by laying a proper foundation, Falkner advises. 

“Fill your infrastructure in the fall,” he says. “For example, if you're gonna do garden beds, fall is a great time of year to go ahead and build those. A lot of people wait until March and April when it warms up and then they're just starting to build all these things under the sun.”

Other spring preparation Falkner recommends making in the fall include buying any pots you’ll need and clearing space if you plan on building a raised bed.

“Go ahead and get all that infrastructure in place so that when spring does finally get here, you're ready to go,” says Falkner.

Adjust Irrigation 

“Once the temperatures drop, you want to make sure you adjust your irrigation runtimes, on turf specifically,” says Chris. 

Those working with an irrigation system will want to run it as late as they possibly can while still giving the lawn time to dry before the day heats up. For example, instead of running irrigation at midnight like one might in the summer, Chris recommends switching to doing so at 6 a.m. 

“By running it at midnight, you're letting that moisture sit on the turf all night and that'll cause fungal issues. If you let water sit too long, that's when you get fungal issues like brown patch.”

Contain Thatch

In fall, take the time to prioritize your soil health. Check for thatch, a layer of dead organic plant material that sits between the turf and soil by unearthing a small patch of turf. If there’s more than an inch or so, you’ll need to remove the excess in the fall by pulling it out with a machine so that it won’t stay there all winter long.

“You don't want that to build up in the wintertime,” says Chris. “You want to make sure you keep it as clean as possible.”