After a long winter, your lawn needs a little TLC. The steps below are like coffee for your lawn.
What to do first: clean up your lawn
Leaves, sticks, that random pool noodle from August. Get it off your lawn.
A light rake is all you need. Debris blocks sunlight and traps moisture, which is how disease gets started. Once you clear it out, the soil warms up faster and every blade gets a better shot at growing.
Sunday Tip:
If you're in a snow zone, rake out any matted grass to stop snow mold before it spreads.
When to seed your lawn in spring
Bare spots and thin patches fill in fast this time of year. Seeds germinate quickly, grass gets established, and you're in good shape before summer stress hits. Think of it as a head start.
Cool-season seed like fescue, bluegrass, and rye do best when daily temps average 55–70°F. Depending on where you live, that's usually sometime between March and May.
Warm-season grasses like bermuda, zoysia, and Centipede need more heat. Hold off until temps average 70–90°F, late spring into early summer for most people.
Here's the other thing about seeding: thick grass crowds out weeds. Filling in bare spots now means fewer problems later. If you need help with the process, we've got a full guide on patching bare spots and another on spring seeding if you're working on a larger area.
How to water your lawn in spring
Before you do anything else, check that your system actually works. Run your sprinklers, look for leaks, and clear anything blocking the spray. Our guide to auditing your irrigation system walks through the full process if you want to be thorough. Easier to catch problems now than in July.
Once you're up and running, aim for deep and infrequent. About an inch per week total. This trains roots to grow down instead of staying shallow, which makes a real difference when summer heat shows up. If you're unsure whether you're doing it right, common watering mistakes covers the usual culprits.
Seeding this spring?
New grass seed needs babying. Keep the soil moist, not soaked, until you see germination, usually somewhere between 2-3 weeks. That means light watering once or twice a day.
Once the grass is actually up and growing, you can back off and shift to deeper, less frequent watering.
Sunday Tip:
Sprinklers need attention all season. Adjust based on rainfall, and keep an eye out for local watering restrictions.
Preparing for your first mow of the season
Sharpen your blade first. Dull blades tear grass instead of cutting it cleanly, which stresses the plant and makes it more vulnerable to disease. Takes about ten minutes. Worth doing at least once a season.
Sunday Tip:
If you've never done it, how to sharpen mower blades makes it pretty straightforward.
Should you bag or mulch?
We love a good lawn mulching. The clippings break down fast, and you're basically getting free fertilizer back into the soil.
The exceptions: if winter left a thick mat of dead grass on top, or you have a lot of early spring weeds, bag it once to clear things out. After that, go back to leaving your grass clippings.
Not sure how high to set your deck? The mowing height chart breaks it down by grass type.
How to handle spring weeds
Weeds wake up in spring too. The difference is timing.
We always recommend properly identifying them first, then pulling by hand prior to reaching for spot-treatment.
However, if you do need to spot-treat, early weed control will always be cheaper and less time consuming as weeds are much smaller and less product will be used.
We've got more on this in preventing spring weeds, and if you're not sure what you're looking at, the weed ID guide can help.
Sunday Tip:
Get in the habit of walking your yard once a week. You'll catch problems earlier and start to understand what your lawn actually needs.
When to fertilize your lawn in spring
Don't rush this one.
Wait until your lawn is at least 50–60% greened up before you put anything down. Fertilizing too early wastes product and can actually encourage weeds instead of grass.
For most lawns, that means waiting until daily temps are holding somewhere between 50 and 85°F. More on timing in best time to apply lawn fertilizer.
Sunday Tip:
If you have a Custom Lawn Plan, your schedule is already set based on your location.
Can you fertilize and seed at the same time?
You can, but go easy on the nitrogen. A 0 nitrogen product like Lawn Aid works well for new seed because it's formulated for greening and new growth, and won’t burn seedlings.
If you're curious how everything fits together, how Sunday products work together lays it out.
Do you need to aerate your lawn in spring?
Probably not. Most lawns don't actually need it.
Before you rent equipment or pay someone, figure out if your soil is compacted in the first place. Signs to look for: water pools on the surface instead of soaking in, soil feels hard and dense when you poke at it, grass struggles even though you're watering and feeding properly.
If you do need to aerate:
Cool-season lawns do best when temps are between 60–75°F. Warm-season lawns should wait until summer, you want it in the 80s or 90s before you aerate. Our guide on whether you need to aerate can help you decide.
Observe more, spray less
Here's the best thing you can do for your lawn: pay attention to it.
Walk it. Actually look at it. Notice what's changing week to week. Problems are so much easier to fix when you catch them early, and the more time you spend observing, the better you'll understand what your yard needs.
Ready to get started?
Sunday uses satellite data to map your lawn and build a plan around your soil, climate, and local conditions.
Cited sources
Sustainable Lawns. Cornell University.
