Spring…probably the most celebrated season in Minnesota. After what seemed like the worst winter ever, April teased us with sunshine and 76 degrees, then slapped us in the face with the most rain on record in Minnesota for the month of April. It’s beginning to feel like we will never get to experience spring. Well, it’s May Day and we are due for a break in the clouds this weekend. Time to focus on getting your lawn and landscape in shape for year:

Time for Some Spring Cleaning

Listen, you’ve spent months and months locked up in the house. Why would you spend another weekend spring cleaning the INSIDE of your house, when you can get outside and enjoy the long-awaited sun and warmth?

Once the soil is dry, take down the rake and pull what’s left over from fallen leaves and dead foliage. These ugly fall left-overs harbor mold and can smother your grass.

Pull up spent annuals, and push heaved plants back into flower beds and borders.

Create thousands of holes throughout your lawn. (Say what?!) Aeration in it’s simplest explanation is thousands of shallow holes in your lawn. It loosens soil, breaks down thatch, and helps water and nutrients to flow to the grass-roots. In time, aeration loosens the topsoil of your lawn, enabling the roots to grow deeper and spread further.

Refresh Those Ugly Gray Mulch Beds

Mulch is a great tool in your landscaping bag. It helps the soil to keep moisture in the hot summer sun, slows frost in the late fall freeze, helps control weeds and even provides you a convenient mower buffer around tree’s and other landscaping obstacles. However, this common place landscaping item is confusing and misleading to homeowners. Mulch needs to be refreshed once a year or every other year if needed. Not removed, refreshed. Refresh your mulch beds by gently fluffing up the old and adding enough new mulch to bring it up to about 2 or 3 inch deep.

 First Spring Cuts

To encourage deeper roots, let the grass grow longer( about 3 1/2 inches). Longer grass has a better chance of toughing it out during hot, dry weather. When you do cut, don’t cut any more than 1/3 of the grass blade to maintain its best health.

Leave grass clippings on the lawn to add nutrients to the soil.

A key element to a thick, healthy lawn is controlling weeds.  But the best defense against weeds is a good offense: Apply fertilizer and weed control after you’ve cut your lawn once or twice. If you fertilized in the fall, you’ll need only a light spring application.

If you need help getting your yard ready, please call us for a consultation. We can fertilize, seed, and get rid of the compacted gunk that’s in your lawn leaving you with a clean, beautiful property.

If you have questions about your lawn, please feel free to reach out to us