Rejoice! Winter is ending! Now that the weather is warming up, it’s time to start thinking about our lawn and yard care projects. We’ve put together a spring landscaping checklist to help you get started. Now is the most important time to make sure your lawn and yard is going to be ready for the hot summer. You need to get it strong now, while the conditions are right for strong growth. If you take care of these things now, you’ll be sure that your lawn will stay healthy clear til next winter!
CV Lawn King’s Spring Landscaping Checklist
1. Clean Up The Mess
The first thing on our spring landscaping checklist is to clean up the mess left over from winter. The snow always falls before your trees finish shedding all of their leaves, so even if you were dedicated to cleaning up the leaves in the fall, there’s going to be a few. The winter storms also knocked branches off trees and shrubs. Patches of ice formed in cold snaps, melted in brief, warm periods, then froze again. As those patches melt, they’ll leave muddy spots. Before you do anything else, you should take some time to clean that mess up.
While you’re at it, don’t forget your flower beds and gardens. Get rid of damaged plants, pull weeds and grass out, and tidy up any debris that’s found its way in over the winter. Doing this now will save you from having to do it when it comes time to replant.
2. Fix Up Your Sprinklers
One of the most important parts of keeping your lawn and yard in good condition is keeping it watered. As we mentioned in a previous article during the summer, your water rates can double if you use too much water. That’s a lot of extra money you don’t need to spend. To avoid this, take some time to inspect your sprinklers for leaks, or problems. If you find any, get them fixed up now, before it starts costing you money. Consider upgrading your sprinkler system to better manage its water output.
3. Pruning
The best time to prune trees and shrubs is while they’re still partially dormant. Once trees and shrubs go into their strong growth phase in mid-to-late spring, pruning them can cause a shock response. The plants will suffer stunted growths and be much harder to control. Doing it now will let you preempt any problems – like overhang and encroachment – without hurting their growth potential.
4. Prep Your Lawn
Even with the best fall preparations, winter will have done some damage to your lawn. You’ll have patches where the grass may have died. The weight of the snow compacts the soil. Many pests and parasites go to nest to escape the cold. Proper management can mitigate this, but you can’t eliminate it entirely. So, it’s time to get things back up to speed.
First, aerate your lawn. We talk about this in more detail in another article. Secondly, sow your grass seed in any bare patches so they can grow in and get strong before summer. Finally, fertilize your lawn and apply pest control products. If you get this now, while everything is still dormant, you can keep it from getting out of control later.
5. Plan for Summer
If you’ve got any plans for summer projects, now’s the time to get them ready. If you plan to start a garden, till the soil now. Get some compost on mixed in so it’s good and healthy. Have any construction plans? Clear the area now so you won’t have to worry about it later. Whatever you get done now is time saved in the future. And believe me, you want to save as much time as you can for summer just so you can spend less time under the hot sun.
Let Us Help You Out
Here at Cache Valley Lawn King, we help with all parts of lawn and yard maintenance. If you don’t have time, or if you don’t feel like going outside, we can get the work done for you. Don’t worry about missing the time window! We’ll do it all and we’ll get it done fast! We service all of Cache Valley, from Utah up to Idaho, but we also are available for Box Elder County and the Bear Lake area. For Box Elder County, we’ll travel to Brigham City, Tremonton, Fielding, Garland, and Willard. In the Bear Lake area, we cover Garden City, Fish Haven, Bloomington, and Paris.
If you’d like some help getting your yard up and running for spring, get in touch with us today. You’ll be glad you did!
