Spring LawnCare Checklist.

Oregon’s growing season starts earlier than a lot of homeowners expect, and a lawn that spent winter wet, shaded, and mostly ignored usually needs more than just its first mow to catch up. Spring is also the best window to fix a lot of what winter leaves behind, before summer heat makes everything harder to recover.

Here’s what’s worth doing, roughly in order.

Spring is also the easiest time to catch problems while they’re still small — a bare patch that gets overseeded in April usually fills back in by June, while the same patch left until July often means waiting until fall. It’s worth checking irrigation and sprinkler coverage now too, since summer is a bad time to discover a dry spot for the first time.

If your lawn came out of winter patchy, mossy, or overgrown, a spring cleanup is usually a heavier version of what a fall cleanup would’ve prevented in the first place — see our fall cleanup checklist for what to do differently next year.