Is The Yard Ready For Spring 2015? Tips to Ready Your Yard for the Spring

Tips to Ready Your Yard and Garden For the Spring

Tips to get your yard and plants ready for the Spring

As the snow has begun to recede, many, including myself are shaking our heads, and looking at what has been buried since January; wondering 'what does one do and where to start?' So here goes!

Lawnmower - Is it tuned up with a sharp blade?  Well it should be!

Plow Damage - No doubt, plows have damaged much of the turf and plantings in their wake, so there's several tings to check.

Sprinkler heads: If broken mark them for later repair.

Sod: Replace sod where it has been scalped, it will grow back if bedded back into the soil.  Resist the temptation to rake unless VERY LIGHTLY!  Sod is the most tender and at risk of damage now, better to wait until the grass has started to grow, this will not happen until the soil warms up, mid April-ish at least! No fertilizer now, your grass is still asleep!  There will be some winter fungus but this will grow out.

 

Snow plow damaged Magnolia

Plantings:  Shrubs and ornamental trees will have been damaged on driveways and under eaves with the snow crushing them and may have crotches ripped out or parted.  Weeping Japanese maples are very susceptible to splitting from winter snow loads.  

Snow Plow Damage: This a small Magnolia (right) with probable snow plow damage on a driveway can be saved!

The damaged branch can be braced and cabled and the tree restored with some knowledge. The fresher the damage the better for recovery the limb as long as the bark is intact, it will continue to grow.  Conditions are most favorable now for repairing such structures.  

Damage to rose canes, holly branches and rhododendrons and such smaller branched plants, repair may not be possible.  Please be patient, spring now is moving very slowly, pruning can wait weeks still (except on fruit trees which should have been pruned  in the winter.)   Damaged plants can be pruned after the risk of snow has passed, keep in mind the shape of the plant on which you are working.  Better to make bigger cuts depending on the damage, the cut will then not show.

Shrub  damage from rodents and other critters, characteristic of the Dogwood pictured on the left, is typically caused when critters climb on top of the snow and eat the bark.  This is also common with maples and  dogwoods, as well as bases of fruit trees.

The client and I will lightly fertilize this one and other damaged trees with a light or diluted nitrogen fertilizer as the soil warms up and the plant can absorb the nutrients.  Do not prune out damage such as this, the tree will recover!  The spring we know is driven by temperature only.  If the ground is cold, nothing is moving, remember that!

 

For shrubs such as this Rhododendron,  (right) winter winds desiccated the tops of these proud branches that remained above the snow.

Again, be patient!  The wood is still viable; the plant may or not lose its leaves, so please DO NOT touch the plant. The stems are viable and the plant will re-leaf.  It does not need pruning!   

Remember, a light fertilization/organic mulching into the soil in the spring.

 

Send your 'How to get spring ready' questions to The Garden Tudor.

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