Spring Lawn Care Checklist: 10 Things to Do Before Your First Mow

Spring is the most important time of year for your lawn. What you do in the first few weeks of the growing season sets the tone for how your yard looks all the way through summer and fall.

Get it right, and you’ll have thick, green grass that makes your neighbor wonder what your secret is. Skip these steps, and you’ll spend the rest of the year chasing problems that could’ve been prevented.

Here are ten things every homeowner should do before that first mow of the season, in the order you should do them.

1. Walk the Entire Yard

Before you touch a single piece of equipment, walk every square foot of your lawn. You’re looking for anything the winter left behind.

Sticks, rocks, pine cones, dog toys, forgotten sprinkler flags. Anything that could damage your mower or get launched by the blade needs to come out. But you’re also looking for bigger issues.

Check for spots where the ground has heaved or settled unevenly. Look for areas where standing water pooled during winter rains. Note any bare patches where the grass didn’t survive. Check along the edges near the driveway and sidewalk for erosion.

This walk-through takes about ten minutes and it tells you exactly what your lawn needs before you start working on it.

2. Clean Up Debris and Dead Material

Once you’ve done your walk-through, clear everything off the lawn. Rake up any dead leaves, thatch buildup, or matted-down grass from the winter. In the South, you probably don’t have heavy leaf cover, but dead grass and organic debris still pile up.

This matters because a thick layer of dead material blocks sunlight and traps moisture against the soil. That’s how fungus gets started. You want your grass to get direct sunlight and air circulation from day one of the growing season.

You don’t need to go crazy with a power dethatcher unless you have a serious thatch problem (more than half an inch of thatch buildup). A regular lawn rake and some elbow grease will handle most yards.

3. Check Your Sprinkler System

This is the one most people skip, and it’s the one that costs the most money when you ignore it.

Turn on each zone one at a time. Walk the zone while it’s running and check every single head.

Here’s what you’re looking for:

Heads that don’t pop up. If a head is stuck down, it’s either clogged, broken, or buried. Dig around it and see if you can free it. If the riser is cracked, you’ll need to replace it.

Heads that spray the wrong direction. Over the winter, heads can shift. If a head is watering the sidewalk or your neighbor’s driveway instead of your lawn, it needs to be adjusted. Most heads have a small screw on top that controls the arc.

Heads that leak or dribble. A head that runs water out the side instead of spraying properly has a bad seal or a cracked body. Replace it before you waste a season of water.

Missing or broken heads. Note any heads that are completely gone or shattered. These need to be replaced before you start regular watering.

Buried heads. This is incredibly common, especially in Florida and the Southeast where warm-season grasses grow aggressively. If grass has grown over a head, clear the grass away and make sure the head can pop up freely.

This is also the perfect time to install sprinkler head protectors if you haven’t already. Products like the Sprinkler-Guard prevent grass overgrowth, mower damage, and head sinking. It takes about thirty seconds per head, and it saves you from dealing with broken and buried heads all season. You can find them at Sprinkler-Guard.com.

4. Test Your Irrigation Timer

While you’re checking the sprinkler system, pull up your irrigation timer and make sure it’s set correctly.

Over the winter, timers can lose their programming from power outages or battery failures. Some homeowners turn their systems completely off for winter and forget to reprogram them in the spring.

Set your watering schedule for early morning, between four and six AM. Watering in the middle of the day wastes water through evaporation. Watering at night keeps the grass wet too long and invites fungal disease.

In most Sun Belt climates, your lawn needs about one inch of water per week during the growing season. That’s usually two to three watering days, running each zone for about twenty to thirty minutes depending on your heads and water pressure.

5. Sharpen Your Mower Blade

This is the single most impactful thing you can do for your lawn’s appearance and health, and almost nobody does it often enough.

A dull mower blade doesn’t cut grass. It tears it. Torn grass blades turn brown at the tips, which makes your entire lawn look dull and unhealthy. Worse, torn grass is more susceptible to disease because the ragged wound takes longer to heal.

Pull your mower blade and check the edge. If you can see nicks, dents, or a rounded edge, it needs sharpening. You can do it yourself with a bench grinder or a good file, or most hardware stores will sharpen it for ten to fifteen dollars.

You should be sharpening your blade every twenty to twenty-five hours of mowing. For most homeowners, that works out to about twice a month during peak growing season.

If your blade is badly damaged or bent, replace it. A new blade costs twenty to thirty dollars and makes a noticeable difference in cut quality.

6. Set Your Mowing Height (High)

For your first mow of the season, set your deck to the highest cutting position.

The temptation is to cut it short and “clean it up” after winter. Resist that temptation. Scalping your lawn in the spring is one of the worst things you can do.

Here’s why. The grass is just waking up from dormancy. Its energy reserves are low. The root system hasn’t fully activated yet. If you cut it too short, you’re removing the leaf blade that the plant needs to photosynthesize and rebuild its energy stores.

Cut high for the first two to three mows. Then gradually lower your deck to your preferred height over the following weeks.

As a general rule for warm-season grasses common in the Southeast:

St. Augustine: 3.5 to 4 inches is ideal. Never cut below 3 inches.

Bermuda: 1 to 2 inches for a tight manicured look, up to 2.5 inches for a thicker lawn.

Zoysia: 1 to 2 inches. Zoysia handles close cuts well but doesn’t recover as fast.

Centipede: 1.5 to 2 inches. Centipede doesn’t like being cut short.

7. Apply Pre-Emergent (If You Haven’t Already)

Timing is everything with pre-emergent herbicide. If you miss the window, you’ll spend the rest of the season fighting weeds by hand.

Pre-emergent works by creating a chemical barrier in the top layer of soil that prevents weed seeds from germinating. It doesn’t kill existing weeds. It stops new ones from sprouting.

The window for application depends on your location, but for most of the Sun Belt, you want to put it down when soil temperatures hit 55 degrees consistently for several days in a row. In Florida, that’s typically February to early March. In the Carolinas and Tennessee, it’s March to early April.

If you’re reading this and it’s already past that window, don’t panic. You can still manage weeds with post-emergent herbicides later. But make a note to get the pre-emergent down on time next year. It’s the difference between pulling weeds all summer and barely seeing any.

8. Feed Your Lawn

After the first mow, it’s time to fertilize. Your grass is hungry after winter dormancy and a good feeding now sets it up for strong growth all season.

For warm-season grasses, a slow-release nitrogen fertilizer is your best bet. Look for something with an NPK ratio heavy on nitrogen (the first number). A 16-4-8 or similar formula works well for most Southern lawns.

Apply with a broadcast spreader for even coverage. Follow the rate on the bag. More is not better with fertilizer. Overapplication burns the grass and runs off into storm drains.

Water it in lightly after application. You want the granules to settle into the soil, not sit on top of the grass blades where they can cause burn spots.

One application in spring and one in early summer is enough for most home lawns. If you’re chasing that deep green golf course look, you can add a third application in late summer, but don’t overdo it.

9. Address Bare Patches

If your walk-through in Step 1 revealed any bare spots, now is the time to fix them.

For small patches (less than a few square feet), you can reseed or patch with sod. For warm-season grasses, sod plugs or patches work better than seed because the grass spreads laterally through stolons and rhizomes.

Here’s how to patch a bare spot:

Clear away any dead grass and debris from the patch. Loosen the top inch of soil with a rake or hand cultivator. If you’re using sod, cut a piece to fit and press it firmly into the soil. Water it daily for the first two weeks until it roots in.

If the bare spot is large (several square feet or more), you may want to consider having sod professionally installed. It’s more expensive but gives you instant results and eliminates the risk of the patch not taking.

10. Edge and Define Your Borders

The last step before your lawn is officially ready for the season is edging. Clean, defined edges along driveways, sidewalks, garden beds, and fence lines make even an average lawn look well-maintained.

Use a stick edger or a half-moon edging tool to cut a clean line along all hard surfaces. If you use a string trimmer for edging, hold it vertically and follow the edge of the concrete for a clean cut.

This is also a good time to check for sprinkler heads near your borders. Heads along the driveway and sidewalk edges are the most likely to get hit by trimmers. If you installed protectors in Step 3, you’re already covered.

A Printable Version of This Checklist

Here’s the quick reference version you can save or print:

1. Walk the entire yard and note issues
2. Clear debris and dead material
3. Check every sprinkler head and zone
4. Verify irrigation timer settings
5. Sharpen the mower blade
6. Set mowing height to the highest position
7. Apply pre-emergent herbicide (if timing is right)
8. Apply slow-release fertilizer after first mow
9. Patch bare spots with sod or plugs
10. Edge all borders and define bed lines

Do these ten things before your first mow and you’ll be ahead of ninety percent of the homeowners on your street.

One More Thing

If you’re going through this checklist and you realize your sprinkler heads are unprotected, now is the time to fix that. Mowing season is about to start and every unprotected head is a service call waiting to happen.

Sprinkler-Guard protectors install in thirty seconds per head with no tools. They prevent mower damage, trimmer strikes, grass overgrowth, and head sinking. Made in the USA by a veteran. Check them out at Sprinkler-Guard.com.

Want the full seasonal playbook? We put together a free guide called The Ultimate Perfect Lawn Guide with month-by-month lawn care schedules, grass type recommendations, and the mowing mistakes most homeowners don’t realize they’re making.

Download It Free Here

Your lawn is ready for a great season. Make sure your sprinkler heads are too.

Related Articles

• Read more: protecting your sprinkler heads from mowers
• Read more: finding hidden sprinkler heads
• Read more: the best time to water your lawn

Written by Ken Kwiatkowski, founder of Sprinkler-Guard and U.S. Army veteran. Protecting sprinkler systems since 2019.

---

Sprinkler-Guard. Made in the USA. Veteran-owned. Patented.