Denny's Soapbox

It’s Time to Wake up the Yard

March is finally here. It’s time to get the yard ready for spring. A few timely outdoor chores now can save you hours of ugly work later in the growing season. A little TLC now can also help many of your plants that, like most all plants, took a large weather hit. The following is my easy list of chores for you to follow.

Rake or blow and collect all fallen leaves on your lawn and on your planting beds. Do not leave any leaves that are trapped under your trees and shrubs.

Pull out any left over annuals. Cut back the dead stems on any of your perennials. Prune any ornamental grass back to the ground. Loosen any left over mulch from last year with a garden cultivator or steel rake. Do not add any new mulch. The ground is extremely wet from all the winter moisture and the soil could use lots of new oxygen to help all the plant roots breathe. Do not re-mulch this year until at least mid-April.

This is a great time to fertilize all your planting beds. A granular, all purpose, balanced plant food distributed on top of the beds will easily do the job. Follow the label for the amount to use.

Apply a weed seed preventer to the soil in your beds. The two most popular ones are Preen™ and Dimension™. These products kill any weed seed in your beds before they can germinate. Reapply Preen every 90 days and Dimension every 120 days to keep your beds weed free the entire season.

A great tool that makes the application of fertilizer, weed preventer, and grass seed go very fast and easy is a hand held spreader applicator available to purchase at any place yard tools are sold.

While working in your beds, if you notice any broken branches on your shrubs, prune that stem just below the break. Do not do any general pruning to any of your spring flowering trees and shrubs until after they bloom.

You can prune back all your roses including Knock Outs now. Prune all the rose canes back to 8-10” from the ground. The only exception would be any climbers. Only prune damaged or extra long canes that have grown out of bounds. Climbers will bloom this year on the canes that grew last year. Remove any winterizing material you might have placed around your rose canes.

Today could be your last opportunity to winter seed your lawn. Simply distribute grass seed to those bare and weak areas of the lawn. No soil prep is necessary if you seed TODAY.

For those who did not winter seed, go ahead and put down your pre-emergent crabgrass control. For those that did winter seed, wait to put down until your new seed starts to grow. Buy a pre-emergent that has Barricade™ as the active ingredient. It controls weed seed for up to 8 months and not just 90 days like they majority of the others controls. Most all pre-emergents come with a light feeding of lawn food included. This will be all the fertilizer your lawn will need this spring. Fall is when you apply the majority of your lawn food. Take your mower blade to mower shop to have the blade professionally sharpened so it remains balanced. Start mowing when the grass starts growing.

As your spring bulbs continue to grow, fertilize any that did not get fed when you fertilized your planting beds. Bulbs are very cold hardy. Do not cover during any cold weather.

When you’ve completed these chores, go treat yourself and you neighbors to some early yard color. Go plant some pansies.