4 Great Landscaping Practices After Winter Storms – Taking care of your home landscape is one of the most important things you can do as a homeowner, and it’s not just crucial during the warm months of the year. As winter winds down and spring begins to show itself where you live, your landscape needs attending to so it can blossom perfectly when the snow and ice melt away.
You may be asking yourself: how do I take care of my lawn so everything around it has an equal chance to grow? After all, no one wants brown, dead areas of grass around their landscape. Here are a few things you can do to prevent areas of your landscape from dying away due to a lack of proper treatment.
Dispose of dead grass
Unfortunately, you won’t be able to completely prevent any grass from dying off during the winter storm. Depending on where you live, enough snow and ice-packed onto the ground for an extended period of time will prevent it from having a chance to breathe and grow back green again when the snow melts away. If you see any dead grass lying around, make sure to get rid of it.
There are a couple of simple ways to do this depending on what size of lawn you own. If you live on a rather small area of grass, you can simply pull the grass off with your hands and throw it away. The bigger your lawn is, however, the more you may want to just use a rake and combine it into a pile for disposal. No matter which way you choose, you’ll want to get rid of it soon, so the soil has enough room to grow it again.
Feed the rest of the grass
For the remaining grass that’s still alive, you may want to consider applying fertilizer, so the grass has something to eat and thereby grow again. There are a couple different options to choose from. One is quick-release fertilizer that – as its name suggests – quickly gets to the roots and allows the grass to grow greener than before.
An alternative fertilizer option is slow-release, which dissolves over time and sits on top of the soil, giving it the best, long-lasting chance to grow over time.
Remove debris from Winter Storm
Any debris or tree branches or big rocks need to be picked up and removed for a couple reasons. One reason is so your grass doesn’t have any obstructions keeping it from growing. Another is so your mower doesn’t risk mowing over said items and breaking or dulling mower blades. It’s also healthy for your landscape as a whole to keep it clean and free of any items not meant to be there.
Keep trees healthy
It’s easy to overlook, but trees need just as much attention as your lawn, particularly in the winter. If your trees are young, they’ll need all the help they can get to grow strong and allow for the bark to protect against outward forces. One of those forces is sun scald.
Beginning around November, apply tree wrap around the trees to protect ait against sunscald and the cold. You can also wrap burlap wrap around the trunk of the tree to fight against frost cracking. Doing things like this can keep your tree healthy, allow it a chance to grow properly, and help prevent decaying that can easily be prevented.
Each of these tips and more will help provide you with a strong and healthy landscape; however, you don’t have to do it alone. If you’re unable to do some or all of these things during and shortly after the winter storm, make sure to contact us! We don’t want you to feel overwhelmed and are more than willing to step in and protect what matters a lot to your home!
For more tips on winter storms landscape and how to maintain your yard, lawn, or garden ready for spring, contact First Fruits Landscaping at any time.
Call First Fruits Landscaping for all of your Pacific Northwest landscaping, gardening, and yard maintenance needs. Would love to help you design and prepare your garden or landscape for the entire year.
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