Spring Garden Cleanup Tips

Spring has sprung and it’s time to get that garden in tip-top shape!

Spring is the ideal time to perform a thorough clean up and overhaul on your garden and yard to help it recover from the long winter.

  1. Remove all the debris. This includes sticks and broken branches, leaves and other miscellaneous debris.
  2. If you’re going to use a rake to remove this debris, it’s best to do this task before those spring bulb and other perennial plants have started to sprout. Otherwise, you may damage the foliage. If you must use a rake, be very gentle and whenever possible, wear gardening gloves and clear the area around new sprouts by hand.
  3. Using a leaf blower is the ideal option if your spring sprouts are up; just be careful to avoid placing the leaf blower nozzle too close to fragile new greens so as to avoid breakage. The downside to using a leaf blower is that most don’t do a good job of clearing away sticks, so those will need to be cleared away by hand.
  4. This yard pick-up is absolutely essential because once the foliage comes in and starts growing more aggressively, it becomes very difficult to clean up garden beds and other areas of your yard. The foliage and growth snags leaves and debris, making it more difficult to collect the debris and there’s greater risk that you’ll damage the various plants.
  5. In addition, it’s important to prune away dead, damaged or broken branches, particularly on any ornamental grasses that weren’t trimmed down in late fall or early winter. Otherwise, the new growth will come in and it will be intermingled with the dead growth, which then becomes extremely difficult to eliminate.
  6. If you use bark mulch in your garden, it’s important to put down a new, fresh layer of mulch so your garden will absorb and retain the spring rains, which will really jumpstart your growing season. Leave a couple of inches air space between mulch and plants base. 
  7. Wait until mid-spring or even early summer before fertilizing your garden, as the fertilizer will not be properly absorbed by plants that are still in a semi-dormant state. Once new growth has begun to firm up, it's generally safe to fertilize. Or, just add mulch/compost in step 6 and skip this one altogether.

Of course, spring is also a great time to add new plants to your garden and Greenwood  Nursery has a wide range of annuals, perennials, ornamental grasses and many other plants that will bring your garden to life!

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