Yard Maintenance is an important part of preparing your garden for the up-coming year. Whether you have a landscaping crew do this, or you work in the yard yourself. Don’t miss these important steps:
- Following the recent snow, clean up any de-icing products from driveways and paths, and keep off planting beds. Add some gypsum to any beds that may have been affected by these products.
- You may have already added some soil amendments to planting beds, as part of your Fall/Winter garden maintenance. If not, it’s not too late for this. The Pacific Northwest still has many months of rain before the drier season is upon us, this will help the organic amendment penetrate the soil, and encourage good soil life and drainage.
- It’s also a good time to adjust soil pH, if your soil is too acidic, you can add some agricultural lime. If your soil is too alkaline, you can add aluminum sulfate, sphagnum peat or organic soil amendment, (most of these tend to be acidic). Adjusting pH will ensure that your plants can absorb the nutrients they need.
- Now is the time to fertilize plants. Rhododendrons, Camellias and Azaleas will appreciate an acid fertilizer mix for their upcoming blooms. Other trees and shrubs can be fed a general organic fertilizer. Your lawn will also appreciate some fertilizer, as it comes out of Winter dormancy.
- Cut back grasses; Miscanthus, Calamagrostis and Pennisetum, can now be cut down to the base, so they will be ready for the new Spring growth. The stalks can even be left on planting beds as mulch to keep weeds down. Perennials can also be cleaned up and any dead leaves and flower stalks removed, once danger of heavy frost is past, for example, Sedums and Echinacea.
- Pull up any weeds and make sure to dispose of them in your green bin, don’t throw them in the compost bin, unless you want weeds sprouting up! If you didn’t already apply bark mulch or dust, top dress the soil to keep the weeds down.
We hope that these tips will help you with your yard maintenance.
Contact Frontier Landscaping for help with this and so much more!