The post Preparing Your Lawn and Garden for Spring appeared first on Miss Smarty Plants.
Winter isn’t over but do you wonder what has become of your lawn and garden? After winter, grass, trees and shrubs are hungry and weak. Your lawn and garden lay dormant and was entirely covered of snow and ice. They need to be brought back to life but how can you go about preparing your lawn or garden for spring?
It is important that your lawn and garden needs to be prepared for spring. If you do not do so, they will be in poor health and you will need to deal with a lot of problems in the coming years.
In order to avoid those problems, here are ways on preparing your lawn and garden for spring.
Prepare Your Equipment
A few weeks before spring check your lawn care equipment. It should have undergone a maintenance check to make sure it is in top shape for spring. For lawnmowers, make sure the blades are sharp and it is working properly. Turn on any irrigation systems to look for broken heads or damage to repair early in the season.
Inspect the Mess
As soon as winter is over, inspect your entire property for dead leaves, thrown branches and any form of debris. Clear your lawn and garden of them so you can clearly see the real condition of the structures in your garden, shrubs, trees and soil.
Removed damaged tree limbs if you can, otherwise call an arborist to do the job. When all is clear, create a plan on how you are going to prepare your lawn and garden for spring.
Use the Rake
As soon as the snow is gone, raking the grass will wake it up and encourage new growth. Focus your raking on the deep, thick, dead and dried grass (thatch areas). While raking, watch out for growth of molds and fungus.
You may also run into some snow mold which looks like a gray or pinkish web on the blades of the grass. Rake it out so it will dry up. Your grass may look brownish but it is definitely not dead.
Remember that there are two types of grass. Warm season grass slowly turn green in spring while the cool season grass turn green early into spring.
Trim the Shrubs and Trees
To make your shrubs and healthy again during this new growing season, trim off any dead branches or limbs. You can trim shrubs yourself but you may want to consider hiring a professional arborist for any difficult large tree work. When preparing your lawn and garden for spring, be careful not to cut the limbs of shrubs that produce fruits or flowers in spring.
Replace Mulch
Replacing or refreshing mulch is instantly a pick me up for your landscape. Generally, mulches of hardwood bark lasts longer (and they look so much better too!).
Apply Fertilizer
Apply a combination of pre-emergent herbicide for crabgrass prevention, and fertilizer early in spring. After about six weeks, apply a broadleaf weed killer together with the herbicide and fertilizer. There are some products that are already a combination of a pre-emergent herbicide and fertilizer. This saves on cost and application time.
Applying fertilizer will bring back the life of your lawn after hibernating in winter. You can also do a top dressing to give your lawn more strength.
A beautiful lawn is a perfect background to a lovely garden. Preparing your lawn and garden for spring is not a one-weekend task.
If you do things properly and systematically, you should be able to walk barefoot in your lawn and garden and feel the softness of grass in your toes in no time. More importantly, prepping your lawn and garden for spring is essential for a beautiful and healthy lawn and garden.
Do you make it a habit to prepare your lawn and garden for spring? Share with us some of your thoughts in the comments section.
This article contributed by author Ann Sanders. Our family is growing! Our new baby boy is taking up our sleep so I am using this month to feature guest posts from other garden writers. Stay tuned for more and please let me know how you like these articles.
The post Preparing Your Lawn and Garden for Spring appeared first on Miss Smarty Plants.
from Miss Smarty Plants http://ift.tt/2nevFjJ
No comments:
Post a Comment