subject: Easy Outdoor Spring Cleanup Checklist: Mulching and Yard Maintenance Tips for Pennsylvania Residents [print this page] Easy Outdoor Spring Cleanup Checklist: Mulching and Yard Maintenance Tips for Pennsylvania Residents
Spring is landscaping season and time to get outdoors and clean old mulch off of perennial beds, apply fresh compost, prepare rototillers for garden tilling, fertilizing, pruning, and preventative yard maintenance as well. This article provides a convenient spring cleanup checklist for Pennsylvania homeowners looking to kick start their outdoor spring cleanup.
Don't neglect spring lawn care or you'll end up paying for it the rest of the year. Spring cleanup and yard maintenance should include properly caring for your lawn and readying your lawn mower for spring and summer lawn mowing ahead.
Spring Cleanup and Lawn Care Checklist:
1.Raking. An unpopular task, raking is important to take care of wherever there are grassy carpets or excessive thatch buildup. Raking is necessary for more than leaf removal, it controls buildup of debris that threaten to cover flowerbeds, grass, and other areas of lawn and landscape. A buildup of thatch more than inches thick is considered an excess, and can interfere with spring growth. A good practice is to do a deep spring raking to remove grass that died during the winter months and "snow mold", or matted patches of grass clumped together. New spring grass growth may have a hard time penetrating through these matted areas. When is the best time to take care of spring cleanup raking? For Pennsylvania residents, you can take care of this when snow season is over.
2.Seeding. No doubt when temperatures warm up you'll see "dog spots", or bare patches on your lawn. These occur for various reasons, including neglect, damage, or heavy traffic. Apply seed to those bare patches and a nitrogen fertilizer.
3.Fertilizing. A good spring lawn care tip is to fertilize your lawn, preferably organically with compost or mulch. Your local lawn care expert should be able to provide organic mulch and compost for lawns. Go light on the fertilizer in early spring as too much can encourage disease and weed issues.
4.Weed prevention. Spring is just as much about weed prevention as it is about grass growth. If your lawn is covered with annual weed growth (including crabgrass), the application of herbicides should go along with fertilizing. Herbicides control weeds before their seeds can even emerge.
5.Weeding. Come spring, perennial weeds will emerge. These include dandelions and other unwanted growth. Remove flower stems before they produce seeds and cover more areayou can also dig them out by the root.
6.Tune up the lawn mower. Mowing your lawn is tiring, but more so if your lawn mower isn't in good shape. Tune up your machine or contact a professional landscaper to take care of your spring cleaning, lawn mowing, and mulching needs.
Caring about the health of your lawn is important and spring cleanup involves more than just keeping your grass short. In the early part of spring, yard and landscape cleanup tasks are very importanta landscaper in West Chester can help you prune away dead branches to make room for new growth, cut back spent perennials, remove old annuals, and remove protective burlap from shrubs and trees as the weather continues to warm up. It's important to get some basic spring yard work and maintenance doneas summer approaches, you'll be in great shape to plant, seed, and enjoy your yard or landscape. Your landscaper in West Chester can also help you assess the current condition of your yard and determine if it's necessary to thin out beds, transplant, and plant new growth to fill in bare spots.
