1. Clean-Up All the Leaves
The sight of golden leaves all over your front yard is, without a doubt, aesthetically pleasing, but leaving those fallen leaves for the winter is not the greatest decision. For one, the wet, decaying leaves will be a lot more difficult to remove in the spring than they will while they're still fresh and dry.
Apart from that, these rotten leaves will attract insects and mold into your yard, which can ruin your lawn completely. That's why we recommend cleaning up the yard before the first snow.
2. Watch Your Step
Don't think the grass is safe once it's covered with a thick blanket of snow. In fact, during the winter, when the temperatures are extremely low, the grass will be especially fragile, which is why we'd recommend you don't walk on it too much.
Of course, you can't prohibit the kids or the grandkids from making snowmen and playing in the snow, but you can at least avoid making convenient trails through the snow-covered lawn.
3. Aerate and Fertilize
Once you cleaned up all those leaves, you have to make sure the grass is well nourished for the winter. To accomplish this, you should aerate the soil first, loosening the ground and making sure the fertilizer penetrates the soil and gets to the plants. You don't have to do this every fall, once in two years will be just enough.
Now that you fluffed up the soil, treat it with some winter lawn fertilizer. These products are different from the fertilizers you would use for the rest of the year. Summer fertilizers are meant to make your lawn fluffier and thicker, whereas winter ones contain phosphorus and potassium that will help the grass grow deeper into the ground.
4. Give Your Flowerbeds a Winter Blanket
It's not just your lawn that is susceptible to extremely low temperatures, your flowerbeds, and garden beds, too, need your help. Before the first snow falls, make sure to cover them with mulch. It's an excellent way of keeping the ground relatively warm while also letting it breathe.
5. Don't Forget About the Tools
Your gardening tools are everything, as they largely determine your success as a gardener. For that reason alone, we urge you not to expose your precious tools and garden hoses to the elements and store them securely in a dry and covered place, be it a shed or a garage, to protect them from freezing over or rusk.
This is also the time to prepare all your tools for the winter so that they are ready for use when you need them in the spring, so clean, oil or sharpen all of your rakes, hoes, buckets and sheers and make take care of any electric gardening gear, such as lawnmowers, leaf blowers, etc., and that's it! Now, finally, you can return to your pleasant indoor activities.
