Getting Your Sun City Lawn Ready for Spring

Central Texas winters are mild by most standards, but they're rarely uniform — a hard freeze here, a warm stretch there — and Sun City's hybrid Bermuda, Zoysia and Buffalo lawns come out of dormancy unevenly because of it. Some patches green up two or three weeks ahead of others on the same property. Spring cleanup is about catching the whole yard up at once, in the right order.

Start with what winter left behind: leaves, dead thatch, and fallen limbs block sunlight and trap moisture right where new growth needs to break through. Clearing this first is what actually lets green-up happen evenly instead of patchily.

For Bermuda lawns specifically, that first pass is a deliberate scalp — a low mow and bag while the lawn is still dormant, done before green-up starts. That's different from the mistake of cutting a lawn too short after it's already greening up, which stresses the crown before it's rooted back in for the year. Once green-up is consistent across the yard, that's the point to settle into a normal mowing height and start counting on it weekly or bi-weekly.

Spring is also the pre-emergent window (soil temperature holding around 55°F, usually late February into early March here) — if that step gets missed, everything else in the cleanup is undone by summer crabgrass. It's worth doing before, not after, the rest of the yard work.

It's also the cheapest time of year to catch a broken irrigation head or a leaking valve — before the watering season ramps up and every one of Sun City's limited watering days is riding on equipment that already isn't working right.

Fresh edges along walkways and beds are the last step, and the one that makes a cleaned-up yard actually look finished rather than just mowed. Our Spring Cleanup service covers this whole sequence in one visit rather than spreading it across a month of weekends. Request a quote and get it scheduled before the season gets away from you.