Rhode Island Lawn Care Calendar: What to Do Each Season

Know your grass

• Kentucky bluegrass: what most sod is made of. Deep green, spreads on its own to fill bare spots, mow at 2.5–3.5 inches. Wants sun, regular water and feeding.
• Tall fescue: the toughest choice for sun and drought. Deep roots, mow at 3–4 inches, doesn't spread — so bare spots need overseeding.
• Perennial ryegrass: germinates in about a week, so it's in most seed mixes for quick cover. Fine texture, mow at 2.5–3 inches.
• Fine fescues: the shade and low-maintenance option, and happiest in the sandy coastal soils from Narragansett to Newport. Mow at 3 inches or let it grow as a meadow.

January – February

• The lawn is dormant. Stay off frozen or snow-covered turf where you can — foot traffic on frozen crowns leaves dead paths by spring.
• Keep rock salt and de-icer off lawn edges; use sand or a calcium-based product near grass. Salt burn along sidewalks and driveways is the most common spring damage in Rhode Island.
• Service the mower and sharpen the blade. A dull blade tears grass and turns the tips brown.
• Prune dormant trees and shrubs — but not spring bloomers like lilac and forsythia, which have already set their buds.

March – April

• Wait until the ground is no longer soggy before the spring cleanup; working saturated soil compacts it. Then rake out matted grass and gray snow mold, and clear winter debris from beds and turf.
• Repair plow and salt damage: rake out dead grass, add an inch of topsoil, seed, and keep it moist. Gypsum helps flush salt from the soil along roads.
• First mow when the grass reaches about 3.5 inches — usually mid- to late April. Bag the first cut, then leave clippings to feed the lawn.
• Apply crabgrass pre-emergent when the forsythia blooms (soil around 55°F), typically mid-April to early May. Skip it on any area you plan to seed this spring.
• Edge the beds and top up mulch to 2–3 inches. Hold the fertilizer until the lawn is actively growing.

May – June

• Weekly mowing at 3 to 3.5 inches. Never remove more than a third of the blade at once — in late May that can mean mowing twice a week.
• A light feeding around Memorial Day. Spring rain usually covers the water; only irrigate if you see footprints staying in the grass.
• Grubs (Japanese beetle and chafer larvae) are the number-one lawn pest in New England. If you had brown patches that peeled up like carpet last summer, apply a preventive grub treatment in late May or June.
• Trim hedges after they finish flowering, and edge walkways and driveways.

July – August

• Raise the mower to 3.5–4 inches; taller grass shades its own roots and holds up in the heat.
• Mow every 7–10 days, and only when the grass is dry — wet cutting spreads fungal disease in our humid summers.
• Either water deeply once or twice a week (an inch total, early morning) or let the lawn go dormant and brown. Both are fine; watering a little every day is what kills lawns. Check for local water-use advisories in dry years.
• No fertilizer in the heat. Spot-treat weeds by hand; broad applications stress dormant grass.
• Watch for chinch bugs in hot, sunny, dry patches, and for brown patch and dollar spot after humid nights.

September – October

• This is the most important eight weeks of the year for a Rhode Island lawn. Core-aerate compacted areas, then overseed — late August through September is the best seeding window, with warm soil and cool nights.
• Feed around Labor Day, and again around Halloween with a winterizer fertilizer. Fall feeding builds roots instead of top growth.
• Fall is also when dandelions, clover and other broadleaf weeds are easiest to control, because the plant is moving nutrients down to its roots.
• Keep new seed moist for three weeks, and mow at 3 inches once it's established.
• Leaves start in mid-October. A light layer can be mulch-mowed into the lawn; a thick layer of maple or oak leaves smothers grass and should be removed weekly.

November – December

• Final mow of the season a little shorter, around 2.5 inches, so the grass doesn't mat down under snow and grow snow mold.
• Finish leaf removal — oaks hold their leaves until Thanksgiving or later, so plan on a last cleanup after most trees are bare.
• Blow out or drain irrigation lines before the first hard freeze, usually mid-November.
• Stake the edges of the driveway and walkways so the plow stays off the lawn, and put the mower away with a clean deck and stabilized fuel.

What to hand off

Mowing and edging every week from April to November is the most valuable thing to outsource because it never ends. Our lawn service is billed hourly at $65 per crew-hour with a one-hour minimum; we estimate the time from your yard size so you see a likely total up front, and you pay for the actual time on site. A typical small lot is about an hour; a large lot around two and a half.

Seasonal jobs — the spring cleanup, mulch, hedge shaping, fall overseeding and the leaf cleanup — are usually two to four hours each and easy to add when you get a quote.