Fall is the best time to do some preparatory lawn care. Most gardeners and lawn care experts agree that if they could choose just one season to put effort into maintaining their lawn, it would be fall. If you play your cards right before winter hits, you’ll set yourself up for a beautiful, lush lawn next spring.

The most essential step in fall lawn care

The #1 most important thing you can do to prepare your lawn for the winter and set it up for success in the spring is to aerate it. Core aeration with a lawn aerator removes small cylinders of turf from your lawn and leaves them on the surface. This is beneficial for the lawn in 3 key ways:

• It decompacts soil that has become hard and dense.
• It allows water, air, and nutrients to get deep into your grass’s root system.
• It encourages deep root growth, which leads to healthy plants above the soil’s surface.

Learn more about the many benefits of core aeration here.

 Other important steps

Other things that you can do in the fall to prepare your lawn for a healthy spring are to fertilize it, mow it a bit higher than you normally would, and fill in any bare patches with new seed. Here are some pro tips on filling in bare spots on your lawn and fertilizing it efficiently: