Spring is here and it’s time to give your Lawn and landscape a Spring Clean Up, but exactly what is that? For a lot of homeowners, it means picking up a few sticks and mulching up the fallen leaves. There is much more to do though, to have the lawn and landscape truly cleaned up and ready for the growing season.

These Lawn and Landscape maintenance items need to be done in the Spring. Mulching, pruning, aerating, fertilizing the lawn, fertilizing the shrubs and trees, lawn clean up, weeding of the beds, seeding (for some grass types, in some parts of the US), and more.

Are you planning on doing this, or part of it yourself? Some homeowners think that they can jump in and do a quick Spring Clean Up in one Saturday afternoon. Many times they quickly realize that there’s more to it than meets the eye to do the tasks correctly. Our office will get calls from people every year that start projects then decide that it’s too much work for them to do themselves. That’s OK, that’s why we’re here. Let’s look at what is needed to do a real Spring Clean Up, and what’s most important.

Cleaning up fallen limbs, twigs, and leaves

The debris that has fallen over the Winter really needs to be picked up before Spring arrives, but if you haven’t already done it, this is the number 1 job that needs doing first. The leaves that fall and lay on the lawn will add to the acidity of the soil and in some cases smother out some of the cool season grasses. Heavily shaded lawns will often have moss growing on the surface of the lawn due to the high acid content, heavy shade, leaf drop and lack of moisture in the Summer due to the tree roots sucking all the moisture out.

Clean up all of the debris and dispose, then take a look at the lawn. Do you have bare spots? Do you have any sunken spots or ruts in the lawn that could use filling in with soil? Do you have a mole problem? Winter and Spring is a very active time for moles in the Southeastern part of the US, now would be a good time to do some mole control if so.

If you have any of the problems listed above, now is the time to get them addressed, before the season kicks off and you forget to do it or run out of time. Also, some of these problems cannot be corrected in the Summer, so Spring is the best time to do them.

Aerate and Overseed The Lawn

While Fall is the best time to seed cool season grasses, in some parts of the US you can get a fair stand of grass in Spring by doing a simple aerate and overseeding. If you have some low spots that need filling in with soil, do that now and just sprinkle a little seed over those spots.

If you have cool season grasses (fescue, ryegrass, bluegrass) you can do these seeding projects in the Spring, if you have warm season grasses (Bermuda, zoysia, bahiagrass) you need to wait until the end of April or first of May to do it. The temps need to be averaging 85 degrees or so consistently to get germination of warm season grasses. Cool season grasses only need 55 to 60 degrees, and moisture to germinate. (remember, it’s called “cool season” grass)

Lime Applications

If you have noticed any moss growing on the lawn, that’s a sign that you need lime. Actually, it’s a sign that your soil is acidic. And lime is a solution to that problem. If you are aerating, applying lime afterwards is a great time to do it, this lets the lime fall down into the holes and get into the root zone of the grass. It takes 6 months for agricultural lime, (powdered lime) to get busy changing the soil ph, so don’t be expecting immediate results.

Pelletized lime or dolomitic lime goes to work much faster and is easier to spread. It’s much like the consistency of fertilizer so it spreads from a fertilizer spreader much easier. Ag. or powdered lime is hard to spread from a push spreader, and will sometimes tear them up. We much prefer the pelletized lime.

Fertilizing and Weed Control for Lawn and Landscape

Spring is a great time to put down weed control for the lawn and landscape. If you put it down early enough, you can catch many of the pesky annual grassy weeds like crabgrass, goosegrass, barnyard grass and others that trash up the look of the lawn later in the year. They will also cause a ton of labor to have to be done in weeding the landscape beds if you don’t control them now. You can use a granual pre-emergent crabgrass preventer on the lawn, and a liquid bed weed preventer in the landscape beds. We prefer the liquid weed preventer for beds because it’s easy to mix up in a hand sprayer and spray the mulch, gravel or ground cover to make the applications.

Pruning of Shrubs and Landscape Trees

Most homeowners do not properly prune their landscape shrubs and trees. Typically, we get calls several times per year from people that are crying for HELP with their shrubs and trees that have become overgrown. If you only prune the tips of the longest limbs off of all the shrubs and trees, you will gradually let them get larger and larger each year until all of a sudden you notice that they are covering your windows and even growing above the eves. Pruning your shrubs twice a year, and cutting them back enough to remove all of the previous growth you will keep them in a proper size. The two best times to prune are in the Fall, after the growing has stopped, and during your Spring clean up.

Shrubs growing gradually are similar to watching your kids growing, you know it’s happening, but all of a sudden you  take notice of how much they have grown. If you let the shrubs get too large, then all there is left to do is cut them back drastically down to a small version of what they were, and let them grow back out, if they will.

Cutting shrubs back drastically, where you are cutting them back to only a couple of feet tall should only be done in the Fall, Winter or Spring. Giving them a cutback in the Summer will often kill them.

If you don’t know how to properly prune the shrubs and trees, you may be best off to hire a professional Landscaper to do it that knows the different plant types and how each should be prune. Not all plants get cut back the same way, at the saem time of the year. Improper pruning can either kill, disfigure or ruin some of the nicer ornamental shrubs

Mulching of Beds

During the Spring Clean Up, iff your beds have hardwood or pine nuggets mulch, now is a great time to touch that up or add a fresh coating of mulch. Weed the beds, prune the shrubs, and then mulch the beds. This order of doing these tasks will eliminate your having to clean up the fresh mulch if you do them in the wrong order.

If you have gravel for mulch, take a look for thin or bare areas where some of it may have washed out, gotten knocked out by a pet, or where the bed may have settled. Now is the time to do this too. It’s much less of a job to do it now in the cool weather than to wait until Summer and do it in the heat.

Get out there and get these Spring Clean Up chores done before it gets hot, and when you can help your grass get a good start for the season. Waiting will only delay the Spring green up of your lawn. Have a great Spring!

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