Autumn is sweeping in slowly but surely, as it usually does in our lovely state of PA. With the cold weather comes the excitement of decorating your commercial property for fall, but it also brings frost and damage to the landscape you’ve worked so hard to maintain.

Fortunately, there’s a lot you can do during the fall to prepare for the season ahead. In this post, we’re focusing on ways to keep your grass green and lively as long as possible— as well as getting it ready to survive the harsh winter to come and come back vibrant next spring.

Help your grass gear up for the impending snow and ice with these winter lawn care tips for your commercial landscape:

Aerate & Overseed— The Right Way

Fall is the perfect time to “aerate” your soil, or puncture small holes to reduce compaction. Over the summertime, your soil becomes very tight, damaging your root systems or making it harder for your grass to absorb important water and nutrients. Aerating your turf not only reduces this compaction, but it also creates little pockets for fresh seeds. 

Overseeding this September ensures that you’re filling any dead patches of grass, which occur commonly over a rough summer of mows and foot traffic. It’s important to lay down these fresh seedlings before the cold hits and your soil is left exposed. When weakened from freezing temperatures, bare patches of dirt can leave your commercial property vulnerable to disease. 

There’s a number of mistakes that commercial property owners make during these processes. Read our other post to discover what to avoid when aerating and overseeding. 

Build Up Your Soil Structure

Our fertilization team will push time and time again for proper landscape maintenance year-round— and there’s a big reason. It can take a while to build a solid soil structure or one that’s packed with important nutrients like potassium, phosphorus, and nitrogen. 

Just like you eat a well-balanced diet and take daily vitamins to keep your immune system strong, your commercial property needs fertile soil to feed your grass and keep your turf healthy. 

Many don’t realize that will liquid fertilizers can give you quick green-up, they do little to build a long-lasting soil structure. The best winter lawn care tip we can offer this fall is to fertilize your commercial property with organic granular fertilizer, which will allow your turf to have a reservoir of nutrients on backup to push through the winter. 

Fertilization can be tricky; too much or too little can mean dead grass come spring. Learn more about why you should always trust a professional landscaper with your fertilization.

Improve Your Lawn Drainage

One of the biggest culprits for dead grass come spring is poor lawn drainage. Over the wintertime, snow and ice sit on your landscape. On that rare warm day, they melt and then refreeze, and suddenly your turf is suffering from crown hydration or snow mold. 

In fact, there’s a lot of other ways that not properly removing snow and ice from your property can cost you, like “slip and fall” lawsuits. Prepare your commercial property for the winter elements now with these tips.

Your winter lawn care tip takeaway: during the fall, check your property for drainage issues. Look for rivets or slopes in your grass where water pools after it rains and for inconvenient spots where runoff flows. Here are five common drainage problems, like fixing your plant bed designs or gutter spouts, to keep water from collecting on your turf.

Hold Off on the Salt

Of course, you want your guests to feel safe on your commercial property, and the easiest way to stop them from slipping during the wintertime is to salt your walkways and pavement. But the salts used to deice can be extremely damaging to your grass and surrounding plant life— throwing off their acidity levels and “burning” them.

This fall, hold off buying the big bags of deicer to stock up for the winter months and instead, hire someone to shovel or plow your common areas. If you must use a deicer, check out this great article for help choosing a salt product that’s safe on your turf. 

Know What to Do Come Spring

While preparing your commercial property now for the upcoming winter is definitely wise, it helps to have a plan in place for the spring in case your grass is damaged. Read up on these tips for reviving your landscape’s dying lawn after a harsh winter. 

Plan Ahead with Caramanico

If you follow these winter lawn care tips, you’ll drastically increase your chances of enjoying a gorgeous green landscape come spring. 

While in this post we focused on winterizing your grass, don’t forget about your other plants. Here are a few winter landscaping ideas for keeping your plants and trees protected against the cold.

Here at C. Caramanico & Sons, Inc. we offer both Landscape Maintenance and Snow & Ice Management services— as your one-stop-shop for commercial property care. Give us a call at 610.499.1640 today to ensure your business is prepared for the cold weather ahead.