Raking your spring lawn
- Katerina Jordan, Assistant Professor of turfgrass science at the University of Guelph
If you are dealing with matted turf, your best bet is to go ahead and rake it to remove some of that dead material on the top. This will allow the sun to penetrate the turf below and give your lawn the chance to come out of dormancy when the temperatures are a little higher for an extended time period. Be sure not to get too aggressive with raking, as you may end up raking up rooted, living material and end up with bare spots or thinned areas in your lawn!
You may run the risk of exposing the seeds of any early-germinating weeds. However, if you leave the matted material on and it warms up before you have a chance to get to it in the next few weeks, you will then be competing with all the weeds that might be present in your lawn -- you would have a weakened turf stand as it is trying to come out of dormancy with that matted material on top.
You honestly would likely be fine either way - raking now or waiting until the grass starts to come out of dormancy, but I suggest you go ahead and remove the dead material now, and then once the turf starts to come of out dormancy (when you start seeing some green leaf blades coming out) you should overseed any thinned or bare areas to try to out-compete any weeds that would be germinating as well.