The mat comes up
Matted thatch and last year’s dead blade raked out of the turf so light and air reach the crown while the grass is still deciding how thick to come in.
FirstThe two visits that decide how the other twenty look.
A lawn is made in April and protected in October. The spring cleanup gets last year off the turf so it can breathe. The fall cleanup gets this year off before the snow presses it flat for five months.
Spring: get the winter off it.
Five months under snow leaves a flattened, half-rotted mat sitting on the crown of the grass. New blades have to push through it, and the ones that cannot are the thin patches you spend all summer looking at.
Beds and fence lines
Blown out and hand-cleared where a blower would throw gravel. The corners that hold wet leaves all winter are the corners that grow moss if nobody opens them up.
ThenFirst cut, set low
The season’s opening pass goes shorter than the rest of the year so the crown gets sun. After that the deck comes back up and stays there.
LastFall: get it off before the snow does the pressing.
A leaf on a lawn in November is a leaf on a lawn in April, except by then it has spent five months wet and airless on top of living grass. What comes out from under the snow is not leaves, it is a dead shape.
- Timing
- After the last real drop and before the first hard freeze. In the valley that window is usually short and it does not announce itself.
- The lawn
- Leaves cleared off the turf entirely, not chopped and left. A thin scatter can be mulched. A blanket cannot.
- The edges
- Beds, window wells, the north side of the house and the fenced corner where everything ends up.
- The last cut
- Goes short. Tall grass laid over under snow is what mats, molds and comes out grey.
Cleanup questions.
When should the spring cleanup happen?
Once the ground firms up enough that a machine will not rut it, which in the valley is usually somewhere in April. Too early and you tear wet turf. Too late and the mat has already smothered the new growth underneath it.
Do I need a fall cleanup if I only have a couple of trees?
It depends on where they drop. Leaves that blow off are somebody else’s problem. Leaves that pile against the north side of the house or in a fenced corner sit wet, freeze into a mat and leave a dead patch shaped exactly like the pile.
Is the cleanup part of the weekly mowing?
No. Weekly mowing is the season. The cleanups are the two ends of it, and they are quoted separately because the work is not the same work and the time is not the same time.
Where do the leaves go?
Hauled off unless you have somewhere on the property you would rather they went. Some people want them on a garden bed or a compost pile, and that is easier for everybody. Say so when you call (406) 261-5296.