You know landscapers that do this every day have secret hacks, tips, and tricks to make their life easier and to make your home and property look amazing. While we love landscaping, there are some things that you can do in-between visits or if you’re really brave, choose to do them yourself, however, we offer free quotes and would love to offer these landscaping tricks and tips for a healthy, beautiful yard.
10 Genius Landscaping Tricks
#1. Use a tarp.
Use a tarp to collect leaves, twigs, and any debris that you are cleaning up in the underbrush or trimming. This will make it super easy to pull the tarp with all the debris over to the truck or your composting area without picking up items twigged by twig.
#2. Create a beautiful edge.
You can make a natural edge of plants around beds instead of buying plastic, metal, or pouring concrete edging. This will offer a particular look to the landscaping with a natural edge allowing for easier maintenance over the long-term.
#3. Don’t forget about starter fertilizer.
Fertilizer is great at least once or twice a year on your yard, trees, and flowerbeds but don’t neglect starter fertilizer, which can provide a tremendous boost to any new plants and trees. This offers low nitrogen, a little higher phosphorus, and offers a beneficial ingredient to increase the soil area around the plant roots to pull moisture in and get a good start to the plant or tree.
#4. Make your mowing easy.
Group plants into bets and islands and then mulch them well to avoid mowing and trimming around each individual plant. – More, Why I LOVE Fertil-Mulch the BEST!
#5. Utilize the leaves.
A great landscaping tip is to utilize dead and dying leaves make some of the best compost out there. You can mow small quantities into the lawn to provide a light dose of perfect fertilizer for the graph and food for the earthworms. You can also use a bagging mower or leaf shredder to grind of any fall leaves to use as mulch later on or add them to your compost pile, turning at least once a month. Once it develops into a beautiful compost you can tell them into your flowerbeds and vegetable gardens before planting.
#6. Don’t forget to test your soil once in a while.
You want your soil to be working the absolute best for your plants, trees, and flowers and just throwing down any old fertilizer could lead to costly mistakes. Test the soil, which can show current conditions and what the soil needs for your type of lawn, vegetables, or flowers.
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#7. Work up a plan.
If you’re starting fresh or redesigning your yard, create a master plan for your landscape and then work in phases. Try to keep your budget in checks throughout the project and maximize the effect by focusing on small projects one at a time.
#8. Calculate correctly.
The last thing you want to do is be running back and forth gathering mulch, equipment, rocks, gravel, or more plants. Buy enough the first time whether it’s soil, topsoil, mulch, or gravel. Make sure you calculate the square footage of the area by measuring the length times the width and how to convert cubic feet of the material for the coverage of the area you need.
#9. Splurge on good garden tools.
I can’t tell you how many people buy the cheapest garden tools only to replace them every 6 to 12 months. Scratch all that and simply buy good quality tools that will last for years. Most of these cheap tools are likely to break in the middle of the first job. Save money, time and frustration and by the right tool the first time.
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#10. Don’t neglect bulk purchases.
This landscaping hack is important… If it’s a simple potted plant, a bag of mulch or dirt will suffice but calculate and weigh the costs between bulk and bagged anything including mulch, soil, and rock. Consider buying bulk material when it can be dumped on the exact spot you need and buyback material if it must be moved again after delivery.
Of course, your time is worth money as well so, if you’re tired of doing a lot of this work yourself? Contact First Fruits Landscaping for a free quote on maintenance, bringing your garden or your landscaping back to life, or creating an entirely new look.