Your Frosted Lawn

As the temperatures dip below freezing, you may wake up to a yard covered in frost. While the beautiful sight of frosted grass is perfectly safe to look at, you need to avoid the fun of hearing the crunch of it by walking across your frosted lawn. When your yard is frosted, the blades of grass are literally frozen. This frost isn’t necessarily harmful to the grass, as it typically melts fast as the sun shines down throughout the day. However, the danger to your lawn is when these frozen grass blades get broken. This happens when your kids or your mailman trample across your crunchy morning turf. It can also wreak havoc on your landscape if the mower gets started too soon, before the frost has dissipated.

How does frost occur? Frost occurs on cold, clear nights when atmospheric conditions cause the grass to become colder than the air. Frost can cover your entire landscape or be lightly scattered in the shaded patches of your lawn. When the water within the grass expands and freezes, the plant itself becomes frozen. Therefore, if you step on frozen grass, the cells burst within the plant and the blade is damaged.

If you’ve already walked across your frosted lawn, don’t panic. The damage is typically not permanent. It usually doesn’t kill the lawn, but the lawn’s growth will be stunted until the temperatures warm up in the spring. At Pannone’s Lawn Pros & Landscaping, we are careful to protect frosted lawns while maintaining your winter landscape. If you have further questions about winter lawn damage or if you would like to hear how we can repair your landscape in the spring, please give us a call.