Skip to main content

The Manual may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site.

Spring Lawn Care Tips: How to Bring Your Yard Back to Life After Winter

If you take a look at my back yard right now, you’re going to have some explaining to do, because you can only see the yard from inside my house or from neighboring private property. Instead, how about I take a look for you, and then I’ll tell you what I see.

person mowing lawn with long grass
Image used with permission by copyright holder

I see plenty of work needed. Grass lawns don’t just grow back healthy and hearty year after year, not without help, anyway. We laid down brand-new sod on our property just four years back, and for the first year following, the yard looked pretty great with minimal effort. In all the years since, however, the effort needed to keep the lawn healthy has grown every spring.

The fact is, in most parts of America, a grass lawn will be all weeds and moss after just a season or two unless it receives concerted effort and upkeep. The good news is, with proper guidance and tools, you can revive your lawn with just a few hours of work on a few weekends followed by routine maintenance like mowing, light weed killers, and proper irrigation.

What You Need

With the right garden tools, you can breathe new life into your lawn in no time. OK, maybe in like an afternoon of work. As it happens, breathing life into the lawn is quite the apt metaphor.

Here are some tools you’ll want before you start:

  •  Thatching rake: Thatch is that layer of dead stuff — mostly grass — that builds up between the blades of grass and the soil and prevents the roots from getting enough water or air. You can dig into the thatch pretty aggressively as you rip it away from the healthy green blades.
  • Lawn aerator: Just like you, your grass needs to breathe to grow. (Unlike you, it doesn’t need oxygen, but still.) Aerating the soil allows air to get down to the roots and leads to a healthier lawn better able to resist weeds.
  • Weed remover: Weeds compete for water and nutrients, so you need to get rid of them. If there are only a few about, just pull them by hand. If you have lots of weeds to contend with, try a weeding tool like the one shown at the link.
  • Broadcast spreader: Whether you use it to spread “weed n’ feed” for a yard with a serious weed problem or to spread lime or fertilizer to help the grass thrive, a broadcast spreader is a cheap, reliable way to make your yard maintenance easier.
  • Transfer shovel: Usually used for moving stuff like mulch and fertilizer around (transfer, see?), this type of shovel is also great for cutting beds or cutting out patches of yard that can’t be revived.
well groomed lawn
Image used with permission by copyright holder

What to Do

  1. Some patches of your yard just aren’t coming back, buddy. If you have areas where moss has fully taken over or where it’s all weeds or all grown grass without a hint of green shoots, the best thing to do is tear out those sections entirely. Use a shovel with a broad blade (and a pick if needed) to cut out the sections of lawn that aren’t coming back, then prepare the area of removed material for new sod by raking across the exposed soil or by added enough peat moss to hold the seeds you’ll soon be sowing.
  2. It’s time to get to the de-thatching. As noted above, if your yard is relatively healthy, you can be pretty aggressive as you pull out the thatch. Go in one direction across the yard, then switch and de-thatch in a perpendicular direction to make sure you get it all up. Or most of it, anyway.
  3. Now it’s time to do some weeding. Hopefully you caught some of the weeds with that thatch rake of yours, but take the time to remove as many more as possible, as they will thrive along with your grass if you don’t.
  4. Finally, use your aerator to make sure that lawn can breathe. The yard should now be prepped for the final steps: new growth.

A Note About Over-Seeding Grass

Few lawns not comprised of sod laid within the last year are so healthy that they don’t need further improvement. Over-seeding is the process of adding more grass seed to a yard where plenty of blades are already growing. To over-seed, you need to have a ready supply of peat moss on hand as well as, of course, grass seed.

Spread a thin layer of peat moss all over the yard — just a quarter-inch or so, a little something to hold the seeds and some moisture but not so much that it covers any existing blades — then spread grass seed evenly everywhere. If you can see a lot of the seeds, add another thin layer of peat moss.

Now water the yard daily with a lawn sprinkler for at least the next month (unless it rains, of course), and remember that single long watering sessions are much better then multiple short sessions, as long watering encourages deep roots, which means healthier grass more readily resistant to weeds.

And go ahead and apply some fertilizer, but not until late spring when the grass has had the chance to toughen up some.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Steven John
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Steven John is a writer and journalist living just outside New York City, by way of 12 years in Los Angeles, by way of…
Moving Tips: How to Make Moving Day as Easy as Possible
moving tips day guide couple packing

Moving is hell. It just is. Besides the psychological chaos that comes with being uprooted from the familiar, there’s also the actual chaos involved in having to pack everything you own, from furniture to clothing to every last little paperclip, move it somewhere else — whether across the street or around the world — and then unpack it all into a new space. It’s time-consuming, disruptive, and even when done on the cheap, expensive. Depending on how much you take on yourself, it can also be physically taxing as you lift and carry boxes to and from a living space and to and from a truck (and possibly up or down stairs). But with career opportunities, family obligations, upsizing, or downsizing, sometimes it just has to be done. 

To help make the whole hellish process easier to handle, we took some time to speak with the founder and CEO of Roadway Moving, Ross Sapir, to get some advice about the dos and don’ts of moving so that your next move might be a little easier.

Read more
The reviews are in for Furiosa, and critics say it’s a ‘visceral triumph’
Is Furiosa worth seeing in theaters?
Anya Taylor-Joy in Furiosa.

Almost a decade after director George Miller last ventured into the wasteland with Mad Max: Fury Road, the director is back with Furiosa. An explicit prequel to Fury Road, Furiosa stars Anya Taylor-Joy as the titular character, who was played by Charlize Theron in Fury Road. While plot details are still somewhat scarce, we know that the movie is set 15 years before the events of Fury Road, and that it co-stars Chris Hemsworth as a warlord named Dementus.

The movie is set to hit theaters on May 24, and in advance of its release, we're starting to get a sense of its critical response. While formal reviews have not yet been published, social media responses are now live, and they're overwhelmingly positive.
Let's dive deep into the social media reaction to Furiosa
FURIOSA : A MAD MAX SAGA | OFFICIAL TRAILER #1

Read more
Will Justified: City Primeval season 2 happen?
Everything we know so far about Justified: City Primeval season 2
Timothy Olyphant in Justified: City Primeval.

Last year, Timothy Olyphant reprised his role as U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens in Justified: City Primeval, one of the best shows on FX and Hulu in 2023. The eight-episode miniseries was a follow-up to Justified, which ran for six seasons on FX from 2010 to 2015. While Justified was based on Elmore Leonard's Fire in the Hole, City Primeval was based on a separate story by Leonard that didn't originally feature Raylan. It was reworked for television as a Justified sequel with Raylan as the main character.

Following the conclusion of the miniseries, fans have been asking about Justified: City Primeval season 2, especially since the ending leaves the door wide open for a major reunion from Justified. But don't get too excited just yet. We're sharing everything we know about Justified: City Primeval season 2, and it's not all good news. But the early word is at least encouraging.
Has Justified: City Primeval been renewed for season 2?

Read more