6 Essential Spring Clean-up Recommendations
While spring cleaning (inside or out) may not be tops on everyone’s list of fun activities, our 6 spring clean-up recommendations will have your outdoor spaces looking fantastic for the months ahead.
If you remember, we already talked about the benefits of using some kind of pre-emergent weed control and fertilizer in the previous post. Now we’ll look at the other items that should be addressed during spring clean-up time.
What’s on the List
Whether you choose to take this work on yourself or hire it out – that’s up to you. But to keep your outdoor areas fresh and in great shape, we recommend tackling all of the items that apply to your property. We’ll start with a list and then break out some particulars.
Outdoor spring cleaning should address:
- Preparing flower and vegetable beds
- Handling yard waste (litter, dead leaves, limbs, grass and other plant-related detritus)
- Additional lawn care, as needed
- Pruning (applies only to some plants)
- Dividing perennials
- Hardscape clean up
Now let’s break them out for a little more detail.
1. Prepare Flower & Vegetable Beds
Spring clean-up recommendations, of course, include the obvious: raking out leaves, removing old annuals and getting rid of dead foliage in your planting beds and elsewhere.
If any of your perennials have heaved from the cold, you can either replant them or tamp them back into place. Next, apply an appropriate fertilizer, and if you want to enrich the soil with organic compost, now is a good time to do that. Finally, loosen up the soil in your beds to prepare for new plantings.
2. Handle Yard Waste
While you (or someone) probably raked in the fall, this is the time to do it again to pick up leaves that hadn’t yet fallen and/or those that you inherited from a neighbor. If you are up to it, you can compost most organic yard waste, including dead foliage, leaves and old organic mulch (don’t include weeds, unless you want more of them!). You should shred items to help them decay, keep the mulch pile wet and remember to turn it every couple of weeks.
3. Check for Additionally Needed Lawn Care
In addition to applying pre-emergent weed control and fertilizing your lawn, if your grass is severely compacted you can aerate it now. If not, leave this task for the fall for cool-season grasses. If you haven’t done a soil test to determine the best ways to support your lawn, now is a good time to do that. If you have insects in your turf, they are easier to control later in the season.
Get your mower blades sharpened now, and consider getting a tune-up for your outdoor lawn equipment. Once your grass starts growing, you can mow as soon as it needs to be done. In the meantime, remember that your lawn needs at least an inch of water every week in growing season.
4. Prune
Remove any dead or diseased limbs or branches now; also, remove unwanted upshoots and suckers.
For springtime bloomers, such as forsythia, prune them immediately after their blooming season. Summer bloomers should be pruned in the winter, while they’re dormant. Look around online for exact instructions for each plant, shrub or tree that you want to prune; the season and timing differs for each plant.
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5. Divide Perennials
Dividing large perennials will help keep them healthy. As a dividend, you’ll have twice the plantings! That’s one great reason to invest in perennial bloomers alone.
The reasons to divide include:
- To keep them from overtaking their current space
- To prevent them from dying out in the center
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In addition, if you wait too long to handle this task, some of them can be a real bear to divide (think of some of the larger ornamental grasses, for instance).
For a general guideline, here’s how to divide perennials:
- Dig up the root clump around the perimeter
- Remove and then separate them using a shovel (pull off clumps of about 25 percent of the original root ball)
- Throw out any pieces that don’t look healthy
- Replant in an area that is at least as wide as the roots clump; be careful not to plant the clumps too close together
6. Clean Up Hard Surfaces
Now is the time to:
- Pressure wash patios, siding and other surfaces. Do some research to find the right cleaning products and pay close attention if you have a composite deck. Strong chemicals can bleach out the color.
- Refresh gravel by raking it back into place and replenishing, where needed
- Paint outdoor surfaces, like fences (once they have been thoroughly cleaned and are dry)
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The Wrap Up
There you have it: The basics of what you need to do to get your outdoor spaces in shape. While it’s understandable to want to put it off, think of how much more pleasure you’ll get from relaxing in your well-cared-for outdoor areas.
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