Keeping your property and yard clean and neat during the year requires a lot of work and upkeep. Cleaning up your yard is likely much more involved than most homeowners would assume. Anytime a new season arrives, it becomes necessary to prepare for the changes to your landscaping and your yard. There are many different things to consider for each seasonal change. So much that we wanted to give you a full breakdown of what to expect when preparing and cleaning up your yard for the spring and autumn months. Keep reading to learn more about what needs to be done to keep your yard in the best shape and how hiring a professional service may be the easiest and most cost-effective way to ready your yard for seasonal changes.
They don’t call it spring cleaning for nothing – now is the time to get rid of all of the stuff that piled up over the colder, winter months. This includes dead foliage, overgrown plants, and anything else that has to be removed to allow space and resources for new growth. Here are a few of the most important things to keep in mind as you begin your spring cleanup.
The best place to start when getting your trees and shrubs ready for the spring is by pruning away dead and damaged branches. The cold weather, snow, and wind have taken a toll on the branches of your foliage throughout the winter months, and now it is time to get rid of it all. Using a handsaw or hand pruners, you should prune back any long stems to allow more sunlight to reach the trees and shrubs. It is essential to know whether or not you should prune plants and trees before or after they bloom. Be sure to trim overgrown evergreens to the direction in which you wish to encourage growth.
After trimming back, the trees and shrubs, it is time to move on to the perennials and grasses. Flowering perennials will have to be pruned to a height of about four to five inches, and ornamental grasses should be cut down to about two to three inches to allow new growth to break through the soil. When the soil is thawed, perennials should be dug up to make more room in crowded beds. This is a great time to either move extra perennials to sparse areas or ask your landscaping company to do so. Remove old, woody canes from climbers to create a clean and neat appearance.
This is the true cleaning part of lawn spring cleaning. It is essential to clean up around your plants to give them more room to grow and create a neat and tidy appearance throughout your yard. Rake away fallen leaves and dead foliage as these can smother growing plants and new growth from making its way past the soil. Pull out residing annuals and throw out any accumulated waste. After the threat of frost has come and gone, remove the majority of existing mulch to get your beds ready for a new layer. Heaved and overgrown plants will have to be tended to, ensuring they aren’t outgrowing their beds, with some having to be moved to other parts of your beds.
There are plenty of areas in your yard that are easy to forget about – fences, patios, walkways, the list is endless. One of the most important tasks is preparing your lawn for new growth and tending to any areas that were damaged over the winter months. Hardscape surfaces will need to be tidied up, and any sparse or damaged areas should be fixed or refilled. Last but not least, removed rotted and damaged wood from all structures, clean the remaining woods, and replace anything that is beyond repair.
Preparing your lawn at the onset of the cooler months makes spring cleanups much easier once the weather begins to change again. Not only does a bit of fall cleanup keep up with your lawn’s appearance, but it also ensures that your family is safe when spending time outside. Keep reading to learn more about what has to be done during a fall lawn cleanup.
There are plenty of dying plants and overgrowth that should be removed as the seasons start to change. Fallen leaves and weeds are not only damaging to growing plants in the spring, but they also become homes to unwanted pests once the weather begins to get cooler. This is the perfect time to clean out beds, vegetable gardens, and gutters. If you have it, now is a good time to add compost to these newly freshened-up areas.
Whether you missed out on those dead branches during your spring cleanup or you are trying to get a bit of a head start in the fall, it is best to trim any dead, damaged, or diseased branches that will stifle future growth. Prune any displaced tree branches that may become troublesome during the winter months, as you surely would not want any of these breaking or falling during a snowstorm. This is also the right time to prune cutback any of your spring-blooming perennials, such as forsythia or lilac, as you can safely prune them without risking their spring blooms.
Some of your plants and foliage will require extra protection as the temperature drops, and we move into cooler months. You can keep roses, shrubs, and sensitive perennials safe by securing them properly throughout the fall and winter. This requires extra mulch added to the base of the plants and wrapping plants in cloth barriers, such as burlap, to keep them from freezing throughout frigid months. Hardier plants can be protected using a single sheet, blanket, or wrap, and others require a combination of cloth and plastic.
Believe it or not, there are spring-blooming plants that do best when planted during the fall months. If you want to add spring bulbs or new shrubs, the fall is the time that you need to put them into the ground. This ensures the best growth once the spring weather breaks.
While spring cleaning means repairing and tending to hardscaping and structures that took a bit of a beating during the fall and winter, the fall cleanup is for protecting and preparing these parts of your lawn for the harsher winter weather. Give your deck a good power wash to prevent the growth of mold and mildew over the winter and autumn. After power washing, your deck, gazebo, and other wooden elements add a weatherproofing stain. This helps to protect the wood from various kinds of moisture damage over the winter.
Whether you are preparing your yard for fall or spring on your own or hiring a professional, leaf removal is an essential cleanup task for every season. This is just an aspect of yard care that cannot be avoided or ignored. As you have now learned, removing leaves in the spring gives way to fresh growth while removing them in the fall helps to keep pests and other issues at bay. You can certainly do it on your own, but it is time-consuming and can be quite messy depending on the state of your yard and the weather. Here is why it may be a better idea to hire a professional leaf removal service.
The best way to keep this responsibility simple is by hiring a professional service to do all of the dirty work. You don’t have to rake the leaves and get to avoid all of the back pain, blisters, and callouses that always seem to make an appearance during this home care task. If you are a busy person who is short on time (who isn’t these days), hiring a service is definitely the easiest way to get this done without taking up too much of your free time.
Professional lawn care companies will have a team and the best tools to complete the job, which means they will get it done very quickly. If you were to do this alone, it would simply be you and a rake. Professional teams utilize more labor, vacuums, blowers, and other tools to get the job done as quickly as possible.
If you want your lawn to look well-kept and healthy throughout the year, then it is absolutely essential to take care of fall and spring cleanups. While these tasks can be completed by you with the right tools and equipment, sometimes it just makes more sense to hire a professional lawn care company. They will be able to perform cleanup duties quickly and ensure that every part of your yard is cared for properly – plus, you get to actually enjoy your weekend.