As spring starts popping up across the country, it's time to turn your attention to your yard. Take advantage of sunny weekend days and check off some important spring chores for your yard and lawn that will help make a huge difference for your summer blooms, lawn and more!
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Prune Shrubs
Like trees, deciduous shrubs go dormant in cold weather. Prune them now before leaves start to appear to encourage healthy growth and flowering in spring.
- Ornamental Grasses: Cut them back hard, meaning all the way to the ground! It’s difficult to shape or cut them once they have grown in. Make sure your tools are sharp. Using shears instead of pruncers can be easier depending on the plant variety.
- Roses: To cut back roses and other shrubs that will soon leaf out, remove dead and broken branches and generally shape them how you’d like.
- Shrubs: This is a good time of year to prune your shrubs, except for those that bloom in the spring. Remove any deadwood and encourage the shrub’s natural shape.
Containers & Planters
Wait until after the last frost and then begin filling containers and planters with summer annuals. In cool spring weather, you can enjoy pansies, snapdragons, dianthus, and violas. Deadhead your plants to promote blooms!
Spring Perennial & Bulb Maintenance
Check when your last frost is and then cut back overgrown or leggy perennials! Plant, divide and transplant perennials and ornamental grasses as soon as the soil is workable after the last frost! A great resource to check the last frost is the USDA hardiness map.
Start Your Spring & Summer Vegetable Gardens
With more time at home last year, many clients planted and tended to vegetable gardens. This year homeowner’s can be more thoughtful about their plantings.
What to Plant in Spring & When:
- Spring is a good time to plant fruit trees, cool-season leafy vegetables such as lettuce, spinach, and other greens. Bare-root perennial vegetables and fruits, such as asparagus, rhubarb, grapes, and berries and cool-weather vegetables such as carrots, beets, radishes, broccoli, cauliflower, mustard, peas, and potatoes.
- Now is a good time to start seeds indoors for summer vegetables such as tomatoes, peppers, and corn.
- You can also bring your herb garden back to life! Trim back leggy plants and add new perennial herbs such as rosemary, parsley, thyme, and mint. Plant annual herb seeds, such as basil and cilantro, indoors to transplant to the garden after the last frost.
Mulch
Remove any debris and dead leaves from your landscape beds and then add a layer of mulch. Adding a new layer of mulch will help deter weeds and retain moisture for your plants. You can also reference our blog post on mulch for more information.
Lawn Care
Spring is a good time to overseed, aerate and fertilize your grass. Check out this comprehensive Tilly blog post on the topic.
Irrigation Check
Before starting up your irrigation system in late spring, it’s always a good idea to check for leaks or broken lines to ensure that the system is running efficiently.
What else is on your spring yard chores list?
Read more about: Tips, Gardening Tips
