Do You Really Need a Fall Cleanup?

There are many reasons why fall is a wonderful time of year.  The trees bursting with color, the smell of warm apple crisp, harvest fairs and festivals, a nip in the air, football, pumpkin spice everything, and falling leaves.  Oh, so many leaves.

When it comes to maintaining your commercial property, fall means cleaning up all of those leaves and preparing your landscape for the upcoming winter months.  With some cleanup and preparation in the fall, your turf and plants will be ready when spring arrives.

All Those Leaves

Cleaning up leaves is not only for aesthetics, leaves can collect in drainage areas and in inlet and outlet pipes and cause blockage and flooding so it’s essential as part of your fall cleanup to have these areas cleared of any leaves and debris that might accumulate.

A thick leaf cover can choke your lawn resulting in dead patches, can create a home for damaging insects and can cause and spread disease in your plants and your turf.  While some organic matter is beneficial to your soil and will provide nutrients, for the most part, leaves will need to be removed.  Unfortunately, trees do not all shed their leaves at once.  Oak trees and others hold their leaves longer and some may not drop until spring.  We start fall cleanup in October by removing leaves, sticks, and debris from all lawn and landscape areas, and do it again in November to keep up with the falling leaves.

After the final leaf cleanup, any leaves that fall can be incorporated into the turf with a mulch mower to help feed your lawn.

Final Mowing

As fall settles in, we begin mowing your lawn lower, at the 2” mark.  This helps to prevent snow mold and other winter fungal diseases from developing in your turf.  Longer, matted grass bends over with the weight of the snow and creates an optimum home for fungal diseases to grow throughout the winter.

Perennial Care

Although some perennials can be left through winter, most begin to look overgrown and unsightly and leaving them can cause mold or disease.  Their roots survive underground in the winter, so cutting them back in the fall will make them healthier in the spring and will keep your landscape looking neater.

Annual Care

By Autumn, annuals are past their prime and look it.  Unlike perennials, annuals will not survive the winter so there’s no reason to keep them around after they’ve lost their attractiveness. Clearing them out will make your landscape look more manicured and your beds will be ready for new annuals when spring comes.

Weed Control and Fertilizers

You may think that you don’t need to worry about weeds as the growing season comes to a close and plants become dormant, but many varieties germinate in the fall and emerge in early spring and push out other plants and lawns before they’ve begun to grow.  In the fall, we apply a 65% slow-release granular fertilizer and spot weed control to prevent weeds before they start and give your lawn the nutrients it needs.
In the fall, your turf and plants go dormant and hunker down in preparation for those long, snowy winter days and nights.  A proper fall cleanup will allow them to be pest and disease-free and healthy enough to emerge a few months later when everything begins to thaw.  Then you’ll see your healthy landscape spring to life!

Call Bluegrass today at (314) 770-2828 to schedule your fall cleanup.