Spring is fast approaching, and you are ready to welcome the season of life and hope. This ultimate spring lawn and garden checklist for Kansas City homeowners will make sure your curb appeal and backyard are equally prepared for the new season. If the list feels long, don’t fret: you can always trust one of the best landscape companies in Kansas City to handle these maintenance and cleanup tasks.
Spring garden care with cleaning and pruning. Photo: Royal Creations Architectural Landscaping
General Tasks
Start with these general tasks that cover the entirety of your front and backyards. Getting them out of the way allows you to focus on specific areas of your lawn and garden afterward.
Remove Debris
Remove debris, branches, dead plants, and trash that might have flown into your yard. Not only does this immediately improve your landscape’s look and feel, it also gives you a clean ground to inspect your hardscape and softscape for maintenance needs.
Deweeding
Deweeding is one of the most tedious but necessary tasks in the spring yard cleanup. Remove weeds from your flower beds, under the trees, in your lawn, around retaining walls, and in the seams of your pavers. You can then lay down new weed barriers or spray weed repellent to prevent them from coming back.
Inspect Your Sprinklers
You should hire a professional sprinkler servicing company to inspect and service your sprinklers, especially if you’ve had a harsh winter. The inspection usually checks fixtures, electrical, and plumbing for signs of damage, clogging, and other problems.
Check for Damages on Fixtures, Retaining Walls, Walkways
Look for damage in retaining walls, walkways, patios, decks, and decorations. Repair or replace them as needed. You can DIY minor repairs but should always work with a professional for more structural issues or larger damaged areas.
Clean Your Hardscape
As part of your winter hardscape maintenance, you should’ve resealed your hardscape if needed. This makes spring cleanup really simple. Start by blowing off hard surfaces to remove any leaf litter or debris. You can also hose down your decks and patios or use a pressure washer for a more thorough cleaning, and your hardscape will be shiny as new. However, if your hardscape has extra details or complicated surfaces, it would be best to hire a professional cleaner for the job.nance task yourself.
Our team maintains plant health for our landscape maintenance clients, including cutbacks, pruning, and trimming. Photo: Royal Creations Architectural Landscaping
Garden and Plant Checklist
Your garden beds might need the most work depending on the complexity of your landscape. However, proper cleanup of garden beds before spring can help ensure beautiful, healthy plants in the later season.
Cutback Perennials & Grasses
By early spring, most of your perennials should be sprouting. This tells you how far to cut them back. For early-blooming perennials, you might be able start the cutback as early as February. Be sure to wait until you start to see new leaves sprouting so you don’t overcut and kill your plants!
In the meantime, don’t forget you also need to cut back ornamental and sedge grasses. However, since each grass is different when it comes to the length to cut back to, depending on its variety and age, it’s best to hire a professional landscaper to handle all cutback tasks.
Check for Damages on Plants and Trees
Check for damage on plants and trees and decide your next steps. Most damage to trees should heal naturally with minimal intervention. However, if any large branches (or trees themselves) are at risk of falling, they should be removed immediately. Damaged plants that are beyond rescue should be replaced with new ones.
Mulch
Compared to weed barriers or chemical sprays, installing or replenishing mulch in your flower beds is a healthier way to prevent weeds while providing essential protection for your vulnerable plants. It also retains moisture for your plants that will be well-received in drought conditions.
Fertilize Flower Beds
Make sure your flowers have enough nutrients to feast upon by fertilizing your flower beds. Fertilizers should be added after new growth is observed, but not when there is still a significant risk of snow. For the Kansas City metropolitan areas (zone 6b), mid-March would be your safest bet for fertilizing. Fertilize your beds when the soil is moist, such as right after a light rain, and during the cooler hours of the day.
Plant Seasonal Flowers
If you’re starting your flower bed from scratch this year, you can start gathering flowers before spring arrives. Kansas City has a wide variety of local nurseries and plant shops that carry ready-to-plant spring plants. You can also start from seeds, although that will take much longer. Before flowers bloom.
Lawn care in spring is crucial to ensure you have a lush, green lawn once the temperature warms up. Photo: Royal Creations Architectural Landscaping
Lawn Care Checklist
The perfect, lush lawn takes love and diligence. We recommend working with a lawn care professional for your ongoing service needs. However, if you’d rather perform the pre-spring checkup yourself, here are the basic tasks you should cover.
Seed Bare Patches
Nobody likes a spotty, bald lawn. That’s why you should seed any bare patches once you notice the unevenness in your lawn. There are many brands of pre-mixed repair packages that already come with seeds, fertilizer, and mulch.
Note: Be careful applying any pre-emergents in areas with new seed as it will counter act your efforts.
Mow Down the Grass to Approx. 3 Inches
Mowing your grass down can stimulate healthy root growth, and in-return keeps your lawn greener. It also prevents the grass from shading the soil, which can lead to more aggressive weed growth.
Fertilize Your Lawn
Avoid fertilizing and seeding at the same time. Instead, the best time to fertilize your lawn is determined by the type of grass you have. Kansas City’s weather allows a variety of cool- and warm-weather grass to grow. A fail-safe rule is to fertilize lightly in early spring.
Just as this is the season to spring clean your house, it is the season to spring clean your garden. There are some tasks that should be done every spring to increase the chances of your grasses, perennials, trees, and shrubs doing well for the growing season. After you clean up your garden, it will be time to plant spring annuals. Here is a list of tasks to do to set your landscape up for success.
Remove Winter Debris
Remove leaves from your garden beds. You should also remove any straw, hay, or mulch you used to cover and insulate your plants. A buildup of these materials will make it hard for seedlings and perennials to reach the surface through the cover before they starve. They also provide a haven for pests to overwinter in. Now that it is spring, you want to show them the door. Similarly, you will need to either remove any leaves on the turf grass and compost them or run over them with the lawnmower to shred them and leave them to fertilize your lawn.
Prune Trees and Shrubs
It is time to prune trees and shrubs that have flowers on new wood. Prune out damaged and dead branches on all trees and shrubs. Be careful, though, as some branches may look dead after the bad winter storm but will put on new growth if you allow them to. If you are in doubt about a branch, very lightly scratch the bark off at the end of the branch. If you see a layer of green, the branch is still alive. Do not prune more than 1/3rd of the tree or shrub or you will injure it by over pruning. Do not compost trimmings from trees and shrubs as they might have diseases or pests that will contaminate your compost pile. Bag the trimmings and throw them in the trash. If they are too large to bag, cut into smaller pieces.
Cut Back Perennials
Just as you prune trees and shrubs, you need to cut back perennials. Perennials need to have diseased, dead, and damaged parts of the plant cut off so that they do not become infested with diseases and fungi. Remove leaves, shoots, and stems from the very bottom of the plant. Cut perennials to a few inches above the soil level if they bloom on new wood. If they bloom on old wood, wait until just after they have their flowers to cut them back. Bag the trimmings and throw them out.
Spring Ornamental Grasses Care
Ornamental grasses will benefit from being cut back in the spring. Cool season grasses need to be cut back early in the spring, when the snow and ice melt. Leave 1/3rd of the plant or you can damage the grass and it will always have problems. Warm season grasses need to be cut back to the ground, or no more than a few inches tall in mid to late spring. Before you begin trimming a grass, put on some heavy leather gloves as grass blades can be very sharp and will cut you badly. You can compost healthy grass clippings. Throw away sick or pest-ridden ones.
Every few years, ornamental grasses benefit from being divided in early spring. This involves digging up the plant by the roots and cutting it into smaller pieces. Make sure each piece has a section of roots. You then leave part of the plant there and plant the other pieces other places in your landscape or give them away. This reinvigorates the parent plant and gives you more grass plants for free.
Mulching Protects Your Plants
As one of your last steps, mulch all your garden beds, your trees, and your shrubs. Mulch soaks up water and releases it slowly to keep your plant hydrated between waterings. It also keeps the soil cooler in hot temperatures and keeps it warmer in cold weather. Finally, it helps keep weed seeds from growing in your garden.
Mulch should be three inches deep when you first put it down. Every year after that, add an inch of mulch to the top of the old mulch. Mulch breaks down during the year and loses about an inch in height each year. As the mulch breaks down, it fertilizes the plants around it. Do not mulch where you have planted seeds until they have sprouted. When they are over an inch tall, put down an inch of mulch. As they continue to grow, increase the amount of mulch until you have three inches of mulch in total. Do not let mulch touch the bark of trees and shrubs or they can rot. Leave a space around the trees and shrubs to prevent that. Leave at least a 4-inch space between the top of your mulch and the bottom of your siding. Some pests, especially termites, use the mulch as a bridge to reach your house and chew on it.
After Spring Cleaning
After the Clean-Up
After your garden is cleaned up, there are a few last tasks to do. Apply a slow-release fertilizer before mulching such at 13-13-13 or osmocote to provide essential nutrients for your plants. Spring is also a good time to apply a pre-emergent on top of the mulch to help prevent weeds. Make sure not to spread pre-emergents where you have planted seeds, or want to, or it will kill them. Both the fertilizers and pre-emergents work best when watered in after applying. Once it gets closer to Mother’s Day the threat of freeze usually passes and you can begin planting annual flowers such as begonias or petunias to add those pops of color to your garden.
Getting Help with Spring Cleaning in Your Landscape
Some people really like spring cleaning in their landscape. Others do not have the time or inclination to do so. Royal Creations Architectural Landscaping can do your spring cleaning for you and get everything ready to shine. If you enjoy the result, but not the process, of doing these spring tasks, contact Royal Creations today and we can set you up on our Garden Care Subscription plan so you can spend more time with your family and less time with weekend chores.
