Fall is upon you and with it the vegetation in your yard may be either going dormant or dying. During the fall you should protect your lawn from winter damage, so it survives when spring arrives, and clean out your landscaped vegetation to make your own compost fertilizer. Here are some preparation tips you should make to your yard to get it ready for the upcoming winter weather.

Lawn Preparation

As the summer winds down and fall temperatures creep into your yard, your lawn will slow down its growth and require less water than during the heat of summer. Because temperatures remain lower during the day, your lawn does not get as much sunlight and heat as during summer and does not lose moisture to evaporation. But just because the weather is cooling off does not mean you can stop watering your lawn. Be sure to keep it watered each week, cutting back from watering two to three times a week, for example, to only watering one to two times each week until the ground freezes, at which time your lawn will become dormant.

Continue to mow your lawn weekly, or as needed. Toward the end of the fall, mow your grass a bit shorter than you do in summer. A shorter lawn will prevent trapping in too moisture, preventing fungus and mold from growing in your lawn and cause disease, come spring. If you were to keep your lawn longer for fall and winter, then leaves and snow pile up on your lawn. It will cause your lawn blades to compress and will trap in moisture and grow fungus.

Compost with Landscaping Clean-Up

After the first frost has killed your landscaped vegetation plants, pull them up at their roots and add them to the compost pile of your yard. Any vegetation that is diseased should be discarded into the trash, so you don't spread the disease to other plants next year.

As you add to your compost pile, alternate in layers the dead vegetation with dry material, such as hay, shredded newspaper, and dead leaves. Doing so will combine the beneficial nutrients from each type of organic matter, which will decompose in the sun over the winter to be nutrient-rich compost, ready to use as fertilizer in the spring.

You can boost the decomposition process by covering your compost pile with a black tarp. The black color will absorb the sun's radiation to heat up the pile and activate the decomposition.

Fall is also a good time to think about a new custom landscape design if you are unsatisfied with your current yard. Think about what you like about your current yard and what you would like to see change and contact a residential landscaper to explore more ideas.