Keep mowing your lawn. Grass growth will slow so you may only need to mow 1-2 a month for the grass itself. Mowing more often might be necessary if your lawn is primarily weeds.

Apply a fall fertilizer to help your lawn recover. I like a ratio of 16-4-8 in a liquid format before rain or watering the lawn. If using granular’s last month was really the last to apply one as they last several months and you don’t want the fertilizer to just feed winter weeds when you lawn goes dorment as it gets colder.

Apply a pre-emergent herbicide to prevent winter weeds. Check the label to make sure the weeds you had last year in your yard are on the label. Crabgrass, dandelions, thistle, nutsedge, and annual bluegrass are common.

If you have weeds that need to be removed, apply a liquid post-emergent herbicide like Spectracide, Bayer Advanced, or Image. This will kill anything existing prior to our pre-emergent applications. I find Spectracide works best on broad leaf weeds, Bayer Advaced works best on Crabgrass, and Image is the best at killing Nutsedge. Spectricide is the cheapest but it’s worth paying for one of the others if you have a particular issue with crab grass or Nutsedge. Also look at the ten day forecast when you do this and make sure it’s dry for a few days so that the herbicide isn’t immediately washed out.

I like to trim my trees later in the winter so now is also the time I inspect growth and decide which branches I want remove later to lift the canopy or help promote future growth in the right areas.