Lawn care at 5,900 feet: what is different about growing grass in Bear Lake Valley

Start with the season

The single fact that drives everything else is that the season is short. The ground dries out later in spring than it does in the valleys below, and hard freezes arrive earlier in fall. A lawn here has fewer weeks to do the same amount of growing, and the advice written for a lawn in Salt Lake or Boise assumes weeks that a Bear Lake lawn does not have.

Cut it higher

Grass cut short at this elevation burns in July and thins by August. Taller turf shades its own roots, holds water through a dry summer, and does not depend on a sprinkler system running longer than it should. Cut high, take less off per pass, and change the mowing direction week to week so the turf does not lay over in one pattern.

Feed it fewer times, at the right moments

An urban Idaho or Utah lawn often gets a five or six step fertilizer program. That is too much for a season this short; the turf cannot use it. A four-step program puts nitrogen down when the grass can actually take it up:

1. Early spring. Pre-emergent herbicide with a starter fertilizer, timed by soil temperature. Applied late, pre-emergent does nothing.
2. Late spring. Broadleaf weed spray with a slow-release granular, while dandelion and clover are actively growing.
3. Mid-summer. Spot spray and a modest summer feed. Heavy nitrogen in July produces growth the roots cannot support.
4. Fall. The winterizer. At this elevation it is the most valuable step of the four.

Fall is when the roots grow

Cool-season grass does most of its root work in autumn. That is why the fourth fertilizer step matters more than the third, and why fall is the right window for core aeration rather than spring.

Aerating in September gives the turf several weeks of active root growth to fill the openings the machine made. Aerating in spring opens the canopy right as annual weeds germinate and disturbs the pre-emergent barrier that was just put down. A spring pass exists for lawns that genuinely need two, but fall is the one to book.

Leave the plugs on the lawn. They break down in two or three weeks and put soil biology back on the surface.

The blowout is not negotiable

Everything above is about a better lawn. The blowout is about not having a repair bill. A hard freeze can arrive in October here, and water left in an irrigation line splits whatever is holding it. The timing has its own post.

Snow, and what it does to turf

A lawn that goes into winter under a wet mat of leaves comes out thin and matted, and is a straightforward candidate for snow mold. Snow here arrives earlier and stays longer. The services we schedule in that window are fall aeration, fall cleanup, and the sprinkler blowout.

Two things that make this valley particular

Exposure. West shore lots face twenty miles of open water, and wind off the lake finds the weak branch on every tree and dries out turf faster than an inland lawn in Paris or Montpelier.

Empty properties. Roughly a third of the housing in Bear Lake County is seasonal. A lawn nobody is looking at for weeks at a time needs somebody who will notice the zone that will not shut off, the head spraying the siding, or the limb across the drive, and deal with it.

The fertilizer program · Core aeration · Weekly mowing