How to Bring Your Lawn Back to Life After Winter Winter weather throws harsh conditions at our beloved lawns. Snow, frost, winds, and salt are just some of the things our grass has to endure through the coldest months of the year. Though it may seem daunting, the following tips can help to ensure that your lawn springs back to life during the year's warmer months.

Aerate Your Soil
Winter's snow brings added weight to our delicate lawns. Soil that has been packed down by snow or other conditions needs to be loosened through aeration. Aeration allows water, air, and nutrients to penetrate the grass into the roots. Well-aerated soil allows roots to grow deeply which will produce stronger, heartier grass. Aeration is done most effectively through the use of a plug aerator, although there are a variety of other tools on the market that can be used as well.

Weeds Are the Enemy
Another important part of reviving your lawn after winter is being aggressive about keeping weeds under control. While your grass is struggling to regain its footing, any competition for nutrients from weeds can severely impact your lawn’s health. Herbicide is an effective means of controlling weeds and should be applied early in the season before weeds have a chance to take hold.

Long Grass is Happy Grass
Though it looks nice, trimming your grass has a detrimental effect on your lawn’s root system. When grass is well-established, the negative effect of trimming is not severe enough to do catastrophic damage, but caution should be exercised when your lawn is re-establishing itself after winter. Let your grass grow a bit longer than normal before the first mow of the season, this gives your lawn enough time to establish the root system that will nourish it throughout the year.

Fertilizer Makes the Garden Grow
When plants such as grass grow, they use up nutrients in the soil. Through this process, soil can become depleted of its life-giving nutrients. Fertilizer resupplies soil with the nutrients it needs in order to support a lush and well-established lawn. For best results, use a fertilizer with slow-releasing nitrogen that is also low in phosphorus. Make sure that you wait to fertilize your lawn until after you have taken care of weeds with herbicide or other means. Weeds, like any plant, will thrive in the nutrient-rich soil created by fertilizer, making it hard to keep them under control.

Water in Moderation
Water, of course, is key to making our grass grow, but too much water can drown the delicate root system of a lawn struggling to recover from winter. The key is to give your lawn a consistent amount of water, about an inch per week. Any more than that and you’ll risk damaging your grass. Though the harsh conditions of winter can wreak havoc upon any lawn, the grass we plant is thankfully extremely resilient. With diligent adherence to the preceding tips, your lawn should regain its pre-winter brilliance in no time.

When you think about caring for your lawn, you think about watering it, weeding it, and making sure it gets enough sun. But you might not think about one of the most important things that affects your lawn's health: the soil it is planted in. Here are three things about soil you should know.

1) Soil is alive
Many people think that using fertilizer is a good substitute for healthy soil, but this is not the case. Fertilizers only have three to four key nutrients. Healthy soil is rich in many nutrients and is a complex ecosystem for bacteria, microbes, and bugs that nourish the soil in exchange for plant sugars. It is a symbiotic relationship that is the backbone of life that is still being explored today. But soil, alive and thriving with a natural ecosystem, is much better than a chemical fertilizer. In fact, a spoonful of healthy soil can contain more living organisms than people on the planet.

2) Soil keeps in moisture
Healthy soil contains humus, a dark organic matter. Each gram of humus holds twenty times its own weight in water, so it is able to soak it up during wet times of year and keep plants watered during dry times of year. To increase humus levels in the soil, use natural compost that has been through an aerobic process, meaning it has been exposed to oxygen and has increased oxygen levels.

3) Soil is a scarce resource
Soil, like water, is an essential resource involved in the circle of life. Its resources are also finite. It can take hundreds of years for one inch of soil to form and due to poor irrigation practices, healthy soil is being exploited at an alarming rate and could become painfully scarce in just a few decades with dire consequences. To keep the soil in the lawn thriving, let a few native plants mix into your lawn. Plants are not supposed to grow in segregation. Instead they work together to bring nutrients from all levels of the earth, repel insects, and provide organic matter that nourishes the soil. If the idea of dandelions and clover growing in your lawn makes you cringe, consider planting trees or shrubs that are native to your area. The biodiversity from them will help nourish the ground.

Also be careful not to expose the soil to the sun. That kills off a lot of the organisms growing in the soil which is beneficial to the grass. Mulch the ground heavily with natural mulch-- not fertilizer or chemicals-- to add natural nutrients and leave a few leaves behind when raking, especially if they are not even visible unless you are standing a few inches from them.

Getting healthy soil is not difficult when you let nature do its work. Avoid chemical fertilizers and allow a little bit of biodiversity. Let the natural nutrients from mulch and plant debris nourish the soil, and you will have an excellent, healthy lawn naturally.