How to Prepare Your Plants for Winter

Once the air is cool, football games beckon and pumpkins pop up on porches, it’s easy to forget about your lawn, trees and shrubs.

Summer’s over, so they’re all set, right?

All the green growing things on your property still need some attention before winter sets in, if you want them to emerge happy and healthy in the spring.

How to prepare your plants for winter?

Let’s take a look.

Grass

Your green carpet of grass has been there for you all summer, making your property look appealing and well tended. Now it’s time to give it a little love. Here’s what it needs before winter:

Aeration

Now is a great time to aerate your property's lawn to loosen up the compacted soil. Aerating pokes small holes in your lawn to let water, air and fertilizer get down to the soil. All that strengthens the roots, which creates a healthier lawn.

Seeding And Feeding

It’s time for one last application of grass seed and fertilizer, while the soil is still warm enough for grass seed to get established and develop roots.

Fall is for fertilizing — it’s the most important time of the year for feeding. This fertilizer application isn’t designed to green up your grass or encourage leaf growth. It’s all about the roots.

You want your lawn’s root system to grow as much as possible before winter. This dose of fertilizer also replenishes nutrients lost during the hot summer.

One Final Cut

For this last mowing of the season, Level Green Landscaping crews drop the mower decks a half inch from the typical mowing height for a closer cut. This means grass will stay nice and neat all winter.

So Long, Leaves

We also chop all the remaining leaves on your lawn with a mulching mower before we put your property to bed for the winter, so your property is free from unsightly leaves.

But it’s not just for looks. Mulching shreds leaves into tiny pieces, which return to the soil to add beneficial nutrients.

Left unattended, a thick layer of leaves blocks the oxygen and sunlight your turf needs to thrive. And the wet, dark, leafy environment encourages disease.

Flower Beds

As summer’s flowers fade, we replace them with the bright cheer of pansies and violas. These sturdy flowers will be happy right through the winter and come back even prettier in the spring.

We also remove old mulch that has faded and thinned and add a fresh layer to beautify your property for fall and protect plants through the winter.

If deer are a problem on your property, we can protect your plants with deer netting or spray a deterrent that repels them.

Shrubs

Shrubs need one last pruning so they continue to look good through the winter.

If your property includes evergreen shrubs, we offer dormant oil protection as an optional service. This oily spray coats leaves and protects them from drying winter winds.

Trees

It’s important to prune and thin tree branches before winter. Frail or damaged branches, once coated with heavy ice, could topple, posing a safety hazard on your property.

If trees are near streets, parking lots or driveways, they’re susceptible to damage from the salt applied for ice management. When necessary, we apply gypsum, a naturally occurring compound that prevents trees’ root systems from absorbing the damaging salt.

Get Ready For Winter With Level Green

Discover how to prepare your plants for winter. The experts at Level Green Landscaping have the skills and knowledge to seed, feed, plant, prune, mow, mulch and get all the plant life on your property tucked in for the season.

If you’re not already a Level Green Landscaping client, we’d love to add you to our growing list of happy customers. Our focus is on commercial properties like offices, mixed-use sites, HOAs, municipalities and institutions in Maryland, Washington DC and parts of Virginia.

Contact us at 202-544-0968. You can also request a free consultation online to meet with us one-on-one.

We’d love to hear from you.