Texas Lawn Care Calendar 2026: Fall & Spring Task Dates
Every lawn and garden task dated to Texas's frost calendar and live soil temperature: warm-season grasses, extension-service timing.
Next up in Texas: overseed, window open through October 30The Texas fall lawn season at a glance
Live · soil temp updates hourlyTexas A&M's fall rule for St. Augustine and bermuda is a late-September feed, a pre-emergent by early September, and no seeding — the Panhandle's fescue lawns are the exception and run on a Kansas calendar.
What to do in Texas right now
Tasks whose window is open or opening within three weeks, checked against live soil temperature at Dallas (live reading unavailable, calendar only). Enter your ZIP for your own soil reading.
Overseed
Do it nowInside the typical window (October 6 – October 30) (ryegrass for winter color only — do not seed bermuda or zoysia now).
How to overseedCover crop / winter rye
Do it nowInside the typical window (October 9 – November 13).
Covers all 50 states. Windows are frost-date typicals; live soil temperature adjusts the soil-gated tasks.
Texas fall lawn & garden calendar
| Task | Typical window | Status | Why now |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fall pre-emergent | September 6 to October 6 | Done for the year | Stops winter annual weeds — annual bluegrass (Poa annua), henbit, chickweed — from germinating as soil cools through 70°F. |
| Bring houseplants in | November 6 to November 19 | Later | Tropical houseplants are damaged by nights in the 40s, well before any frost — and a sudden move from 50°F nights to a 70°F house causes leaf drop. |
| Core aerate | May 4 to June 18 | Done for the year | Relieves compaction and opens thatch so water, air, and fertilizer reach the roots — and it is the best seedbed prep for overseeding. |
| Overseed | October 6 to October 30 | Do it now | Warm soil plus cool air is the best germination combination of the year, and new seedlings need 6–8 weeks of growth before the first hard freeze. |
| Cover crop / winter rye | October 9 to November 13 | Do it now | A cover crop holds soil, scavenges leftover nitrogen, and adds organic matter over winter — bare vegetable beds lose both soil and fertility to winter rain. |
| Fall fertilizer | September 1 to September 30 | Done for the year | Fall nitrogen builds roots and carbohydrate reserves instead of top growth — the single most valuable feeding of the year for cool-season turf. |
| Plant garlic | November 6 to December 11 | Later | Garlic needs 4–6 weeks to root before the ground freezes but should not push much top growth — planting around the first frost, 2 weeks either side, is the sweet spot. |
| Final mow | November 13 to December 11 | Later | Grass left long under snow mats and invites snow mold; cut too short it loses winter insulation. The last cut at 2–2.5 inches is the compromise. |
| Winterize sprinklers | November 17 to December 11 | Later | Water left in lines and backflow preventers expands when it freezes and splits pipes, valves, and heads — a repair that costs more than the whole winterization. |
| Plant tulips & bulbs | December 4 to January 15 | Later | Bulbs root in cool soil and need 12–14 weeks of chilling below 45°F to flower — planted into warm soil they rot or sprout early. |
Texas spring lawn calendar
Spring runs off the last frost (March 5) and, for pre-emergent, off soil temperature. The crabgrass trigger is 55°F at 1 to 2 inches for four or five days, not a date.
| Task | Typical window | Why then |
|---|---|---|
| Spring pre-emergent | January 29 to February 26 | Crabgrass germinates when soil at 1–2 inches holds 55°F for 4–5 consecutive days. Pre-emergent has to be in place BEFORE that — it has no effect on crabgrass that has already sprouted. |
| First mow | February 26 to March 26 | The first cut removes winter-damaged tips and signals the lawn to tiller and thicken — but mowing soggy soil ruts it, and scalping stresses turf before roots are working. |
| Spring grass seed | April 16 to May 28 | Spring seeding is second-best (fall is better) because seedlings face summer heat and crabgrass, but it is the only window for warm-season seed, which needs 65–70°F soil. |
| First spring fertilizer | April 16 to May 14 | Feeding too early pushes leaf growth ahead of root growth and feeds weeds — wait until the lawn is actively growing and has been mowed 2–3 times (cool-season) or is fully green (warm-season). |
Soil temperature and frost countdown across Texas
| City | Soil temp now (6 cm) | Typical first frost | Days to first frost | Typical last frost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dallas | loading… | November 18 | 40 | March 8 |
| Amarillo | loading… | October 24 | 15 | April 16 |
| Houston | loading… | December 8 | 60 | February 8 |
Soil temperature is modeled at 6 cm by Open-Meteo and read live in your browser; frost dates are NOAA 1991 to 2020 normals for each reference station.
Texas lawn grasses and mowing heights
Texas is a warm-season state. Common lawn grasses: St. Augustine, bermudagrass, zoysia, buffalograss, tall fescue (Panhandle). Warm-season grasses grow from late spring to early fall, go straw-brown dormant at the first frost, and are never seeded in fall, only overseeded with ryegrass for winter color.
| Grass | Mowing height |
|---|---|
| Bermudagrass | 1 to 2 in |
| Zoysia | 1 to 2.5 in |
| St. Augustine | 3 to 4 in |
| Centipede | 1.5 to 2 in |
| Bahiagrass | 3 to 4 in |
Task-by-task guide for Texas
Soil temperature, growing degree days, and the frost anchor
Soil temperature beats air temperature. Grass seed germinates from about 50°F soil, crabgrass from a sustained 55°F, warm-season seed from 65°F, and tulips want soil under 55°F so they root without sprouting. Soil at seed depth warms and cools far more slowly than the air above it, so a hot week in April or a cold snap in October moves the soil only a few degrees. That is why the soil-gated tasks on this page defer to the live reading over the calendar.
Growing degree days (GDD) are how turf scientists track it: daily heat accumulated above a base (usually 50°F). Crabgrass germination, for instance, lines up with roughly 200 GDD base 50°F in spring, the same signal as forsythia finishing bloom. The frost calendar is the long-run average of all that heat accounting.
Why first frost anchors the fall. Most fall tasks are really a countdown to the first hard freeze: seedlings need 6 to 8 weeks of growth before it, garlic needs 4 to 6 weeks of rooting, cool-season fertilizer needs 2 to 4 weeks of uptake, and irrigation has to be drained before it. (Warm-season fertilizer is the exception: Southern extension programs cut nitrogen off on a calendar date, not a frost offset, because the Deep South frost arrives long after the grass stops growing.) Texas's typical first frost is November 20; see the Texas frost dates page for the early/late brackets and city table.
Texas lawn care FAQ
The rest of your Texas fall
More Southwest lawn calendars
Windows are climatological typicals computed from NOAA 1991 to 2020 frost normals and grass-zone rules, cross-checked against Texas A&M AgriLife Extension — Aggie Turf guidance. Any single year runs ±2 weeks; live soil temperature (Open-Meteo, 6 cm) is modeled, not measured. National tool: fall planting calendar by ZIP → Hero image: “2022-10-26 08 11 53 Fallen Red Maple and Saucer Magnolia leaves on a lawn in autumn along Aquetong Lane in the Mountainview section of Ewing Township, Mercer County, New Jersey” by Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0