Spring is here! At least for this weekend. Looks like it’s going to be warm and beautiful, the perfect weather for cleaning up your landscape. If you haven’t already, here are a few tasks to tackle in the next few weeks.
- Cut back any perennial flowers or ornamental grasses. Trim the old growth to ground level if there’s no new green growth visible. If you see new leaves emerging already, trim last year’s stems and leaves right above the tips of the new green leaves.
- Prune shrubs. For twiggy shrubs with lots of thin branches, cut out one-third of the oldest branches at ground level. For thicker branched shrubs, cut out dead, declining, or unwanted branches by cutting at a branch crotch. You can make these cuts at any height of the branch that works best. Just don’t make cuts more than one inch away from a branch– or the point where two branches join.
- Rake old leaves and debris. If you have drifts of last year’s leaves piled on your lawn, plant beds, or gravel areas, now is the time to rake that material up to make space for this year’s growth.
- Top of your wood/bark mulch. Add enough new mulch in plant or shrub beds to bring the layer to three to four inches thick. That will help suppress new weeds and protect the soil and roots of your landscape plants. It’s fine to add mulch on top of the existing stuff. You may just want to mix it a little to create a more uniform look.
- Think about putting down weed preventer in gravel areas that get a lot of weeds growing from seed.
- Think about how you’ll aerate your lawn in April/May. You can hire someone to do it for you or rent a machine yourself.
- Decide if you need to mow your lawn this weekend or you can wait. I made a video to help you know when it’s time to start mowing your lawn in spring.
Need more detailed information about these tasks? Check out this video and post on March yard care tasks.
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