We’ll be out on exactly April 1st… Fools! We’ve had seasons start before the end of March and have had 10+ inches of snow in early May pushing our start to mid-May. It’s not based on a calendar date, here’s our strategy:
The longer answer is that we watch many measurements to first get started but then more importantly is making sure our crabgrass preventer gets down in time. We may have to skip some lawns are still have snow piles, need a bit of cleanup from the winter or are too wet. We’ll be back. We start our Spring applications closer to our location in Loretto so our return trips to the ones skipped aren’t too costly.
The following picture shows machine tracks from a competitor of ours who isn’t cautious of this condition
Nothing negative will happen and there is actually some benefit. With the ground unfrozen, any new snow will behave just like rain. It will soak the fertilizer and crabgrass preventer into the soil, benefiting the turf. Our internal, “turf nerdy” joke is that a spring snow is “slow-release moisture” (good fertilizers are labeled slow-release).