Now that the snow and ice are receding a bit, and we are beginning to get tiny glimpses of spring, it’s time to prepare our outdoor spaces for warmer weather. With a little bit of preparation, it won’t take much work to make your yard ready for use in the warmer months to come.
Clean debris. The first thing to do is to walk around your yard and see what happened over the winter. You’ll likely notice debris and broken branches left over from the winter storms; leaves that fell after the snow started or that didn’t make it into the last fall clean up; long forgotten birds’ nests, paper, wrappers, and other miscellanea that blew in from the road. A quick raking will take care of all these issues and make your yard look cleaner in no time.
Trimming. Next, you should trim bushes around your property that may be overgrown, or whose branches might have received damage from heavy snow. It’s also a good time to trim tree branches that may be dead; with no leaves on them, you can really get up close and inspect the branches thoroughly.
Mulch. Late April or May is a generally good time to apply mulch around trees, shrubs, and other plantings. This is because weeds have not had a chance to grow yet, and the soil is beginning to warm up. Mulching in the spring will also lock in nutrients needed for your plantings and add to your yard’s aesthetic when the warm weather comes, and everything starts to grow and bloom.
Fertilize the lawn. The grass is waking in the spring and needs to be fed, and late March/early April is the perfect time to start applying fertilizer. It’s also a great time to deal with crabgrass if you have patches of it on your lawn.
Spreading the snow. If you have big piles of snow on your lawn, it’s a good idea to spread it around on your lawn more evenly, so some spots of the lawn aren’t overly wet while others remain dry. (Try to stay off the overly wet part until it dries out a bit to give the grass a chance to grow and not have that area become a muddy mess.)
Reevaluate entertainment areas. Now is also a good time to consider how you’re using your outdoor spaces, and decide if you want to make any changes to add or expand on any entertainment areas like an addition of a pergola or pavilion, a built-in spa or hot tub, or designing an outdoor kitchen for example.
Garden Planning
After the black and white panoramas of winter, the thoughts of spring’s color fill many of us with cheerful anticipation. Many of us love the beginning of spring because it’s the signal that we can get our gardens going!
Spring is the perfect time to plan what you want to plant this year. Walk around your property and see if you’d like to make any changes to your landscape, like adding new flowers, shrubbery and trees, or maybe even a fruit or vegetable garden, for example. Spring is also the time to think about replacing what may have died or been irreparably damaged over the winter.
If you are planning a vegetable or flower garden, you will need to start your plants early indoors or in a greenhouse if you are not buying your seedlings from a commercial grower; traditionally, the seedlings are planted outside in New Hampshire after Memorial Day because that’s the last date we can be sure of avoiding a killing frost.
However, you can prepare your outdoor garden soil now by cleaning up any debris, including any old mulch and dead leaves in your proposed garden space. You’ll need to pull any weeds or annuals that may have wintered over in your garden, and loosen the soil with a tiller as the weight of the snow may have compacted it a bit; you can add compost at this point as well, to make sure the soil is well fertilized.
With a little thought and advanced preparation, your landscape, gardens, and entertainment spaces will be ready for spring. We’ll be happy to help with all of this, including creating a master plan for spring success and making the most of your outdoor spaces for increased property value and enjoyment. Please call us at 603.707.0630 or email us to get started.
Spring is the time of renewal, and that means for your landscapes and gardens, too! While the official start of spring begins in March, the actual start of spring feels like it begins a little later here in New England. We still have bits of snow and ice hanging around in spots, but signs of spring are certainly beginning to pop up everywhere. This transitional period is the perfect time to start preparing your green spaces and gardens for the upcoming spring and summer seasons. Here are a few tips to get started.
Walk Around and Take it In
Before you do anything else, walk around your property and see what needs to be done. Winter can be rough on a landscape, and a lot of damage can be hidden under piles of snow. You may discover holes in lawns from burrowing animals, damage from ice on walkways, broken tree branches and flattened shrubbery, and dead spots of lawn.
Start with a Clean Slate
Once you’ve seen what needs to be done to get your green spaces and gardens ready, the best place to start is with a good cleaning. Now’s the time to remove broken branches, leftover leaves, and the stuff that the wind picks up stuff from driveways, roads, and nearby properties.
Raking your lawn is the best way to clean up any dead leaves that fell during the winter or remain from the last fall clean up. Raking will also remove the bits of grass that did not survive the winter as well as the myriad of twigs and small branches that fell during the snow and ice storms we had this season.
Clean around your plant beds and in your garden area. It’s important to get these areas ready for planting, so once the threat of frost has passed, these areas will be ready to go.
Tidy up the Trees
Early spring is the best time to lightly prune your trees and shrubbery. Heavy winter snows and ice storms are damaging to trees and shrubs, so a light pruning helps to keep them in good shape.
By pruning early, you’re also giving your trees and shrubs a healthy start on new growth. It’s best to prune before any new growth starts, because in later spring and summer, the plant’s energy will be focused on flowering and growth. Shaping the plant will also be easier when there are no leaves to get in the way of your view.
Lawn Care
Your lawn may look a little sparse and brownish this time of year. If you have bare spots on your lawn, once the weather gets a bit warmer and your lawn gets a bit greener, it’s a good idea to have your lawn spot-seeded and fertilized. You can pull out any weeds you see, before they’ve really had a chance to start growing and before you’ve fertilized your lawn.
Don’t mow the lawn just yet, though, even though you may see a bit of winter growth. The lawn has been through a lot over the winter months, and you don’t want to cut it too short while it’s growing in the early spring or you may damage its root system. Wait until it’s well-established and warmer outside before eayou begin mowing.
If you didn’t aerate your lawn in the fall, you can do it in the spring before the real growing season starts. You should also fill in the holes in your lawn at this time, if you’ve found any.
Get the Whole Area Ready
Don’t forget about your hardscapes. Sweep up the patios and verandas, uncover or bring out the furniture, and clean out the planters.
Inspect your irrigation system. If it’s warm enough, turn it on to make sure that it works properly and that there are no leaks. If you find problems, call your irrigation company before they get busy for the season.
Plan Ahead
During the long winter, and especially while tending to your property during this late winter/early spring prep, you’ve most likely thought of some ideas on what you’d like to do with your property this year. Now’s the time collect all those ideas into a plan. Decide to plant a vegetable garden or find a new spot for your existing one to see if it’ll do better. Select new annuals or perennials to bring more color to your outdoor spaces.
Visit our Garden Center in Moultonborough to see what you may want to plant, or if there’s anything new to try out. Of course, you’ll want to wait until the chance of the last frost has passed before planting anything, but now’s the time to plan what you want to plant, and where. We’ve got an experienced and creative team on hand, so be sure to ask for help or see what they are doing for new ideas.
Spring Pruning Techniques & The Best Time To Prune Which Plants
Pruning can be intimidating based on the decision of when to prune, how much to prune, and the proper types of cuts to make. Proper pruning is important and provides these important benefits.
To maintain plant vigor.
Create and preserve a good branch or plant structure
Increase flower or fruit production on fruit trees.
Improve overall health and air flow.
Keeping the plant size to the space in which it is planted.
People often find themselves pruning shrubs or trees more often because they have been planted in a location where mature size was not taken into account. The excess growth can lead to encroaching on other plants, screen windows, or spill into the lawn spaces and walkways.
A common mistake is pruning a plant purely by its appearance rather than looking at its natural growth factors: size, width, shape, growth rate, and determining the best course of action from there. If possible, it’s important to start pruning plants when they’re young as it is easier to maintain a well pruned tree. It’s important to cut back conservatively and knowledgeably, otherwise the plant often ends up worse off than if you just left it alone.
The first step to starting with good pruning practice is to select a high-quality plant from a reputable garden center who has been pruning it correctly from the early stages. This will create good branch structure and a good balance that will eventually establish well. Starting with healthy plants that have “good bones” makes a huge difference.
Some Things to Consider Before You Prune
It is a known fact that more pruning in young, vibrant shrubs and trees increases the amount of new growth. This means that if you prune too often, it can make the situation worse or even require more attention than if you had just left it alone. With older trees that have lost a lot of their vigor, a good heavy renovation prune often stimulates new growth of the tree and helps produce more branches, flowers, or fruit. Just like mowing grass weekly, when pruning a shrub or tree it is recommended that no more than 1/3 of the height be taken off per year to avoid stress on the tree or shrub.
Timing your pruning also has a lot to do with the species that you are working on. There is a spring and early summer prune which will help take off a lot of the new flushed growth and prohibits a lot of new shoots. You should be careful on fall pruning of some items as this can stimulate new flushes of growth that can be damaged by early frosts and cold freezes.
For flowering type shrubs and trees, it’s important to determine if the species will flower on the new buds from the current season or the previous season’s growth. Knowing this will help you decide when it’s best to prune and reduce cutting off the new potential flowers. We have found that if you prune in the dormant season, and take off growth with buds that would have developed in the spring, it will help the plant flower more and develop a stronger branch structure. This also helps reduce the time that the open wound is susceptible to disease before active growth starts.
There is definitely a benefit to pruning shrubs and trees for the right reasons. It’s always good to take off any dead, diseased, or dying material at any point. This will reduce the stress on the plant, reduce the wounded area from insect and disease damage, and allow the wound to heal correctly. If you put thought and consideration into what you are trying to accomplish and what outcomes you hope to have, this will drive how you do your pruning, when you do it (depending on species), and will also help you decide if you really have the right plant for the area.
Proper Pruning Tools
Loppers: used for larger branches up to 1” in diameter.
Pole Pruner: used for different size branches that are further up in the canopy of the tree that cannot be reached from the ground or ladder. These have a lopper-type cutting ability as well as a heavily toothed saw that is used for larger branches.
Hedge Shears: used to shape smaller shrubs with very fine or thin branches.
By-Pass Pruners: this type of pruner has the blades slide by side like a pair of common scissors.
Anvil Pruners: this is a sharp blade that pushes down on a flat, small metal surface on the pruner to cut the branch.
Chainsaw: used for larger branches that cannot be cut by a pole saw or other method.
It is very important that you sanitize your tools before you start pruning anything. A simple 10% bleach and 90% water solution is the easiest way. It is recommended that you do this between each type of plant and cut that is being made to reduce the chance of spreading a disease. Although it is not common to spread disease through pruning, there is some risk, and sanitizing your tools will reduce that risk greatly. It’s also a good idea to always start with your known healthy plants and then finish pruning any plants or shrubs in question.
When you start to prune your plants, you need to consider what the mature look of the plant is and make your pruning cuts accordingly. The type of cut and where it is made will have a big impact on how the wound heals, along with how the new branch structure will grow out and effect the health of the plant in the future. It is said that most species of shrubs and trees will respond to the cut similarly as long as it is done the right way.
Different Types of Pruning Cuts
There are several different types of cuts that can be made during the pruning process depending on what the condition of the plant is, what you are trying to accomplish, and the species of the plant as well:
Heading Cuts: this is when the new growing part of the branch is taken off, which then stimulates the lower buds to push out a vigorous flush of new growth. This method is often used when you want to create a dense type of growth like shaping a small shrub, hedge, or tree. If you are using this method only to keep the plant size down, you have the wrong plant for that location.
Pinching: this method is used by taking off only the new growth on the stem or branch, which then pushes out new growth from the buds below that to develop into branches. The more often this is done, the denser the branch structure will become as the plant grows. For example, we see this type of practice a lot in the growing of annual plants or fall mums that have 3-4 pinches in a 6 month period to shape and build out the density and fullness of the plant.
Thinning Cuts: these types of cuts are taking off more than the small new growth at the tip. It is cutting back down to the first or another lateral branch which then will put energy back into the growth of that lateral branch rather than pushing out new growth at the pruned location. This method is often used to help open up air flow inside the canopy of a tree, cut crossing branches out, and decrease the height.
Removal Cuts: this is one of the heavier cuts made which results in taking the branch right back to the main stem or trunk of a large tree. It can be utilized when trying to limb a tree up from the ground.
Branch Collar and Branch Bark Ridge
When making cuts during pruning, it is very important that each cut is done with the correct angle as trees and shrubs do not have the ability to heal “tissue”. Instead, they create a barrier of cells to reduce the damage of the wound. The cut angle is easy to establish once you are able to identify the key features on the branch. These features are the “branch collar” and “branch bark ridge”.
Branch Collar is the swollen area that is found right where the branch and trunk tissue connect at the start of growth.
Branch Bark Ridge is the area of the branch in which there is raised bark that the branch and stem meet at. This area is crucial to the health of a tree because the “woundwood” is located inside this area, which has cells that help form tissue to protect the tree from decay after cuts are made.
When you start to prune, the cut needs to be right above the branch collar and at the same angle as the branch bark ridge. If you cut below or your cuts are flat, this reduces the amount of woundwood and the trees ability to fully heal the wound, which then opens the tree up for decay and insects.
If you are worried about doing this process, you can always start out on a small shrub or tree in an inconspicuous location, take a photo of the area you are about to prune, and make the proper cut. Then, in a few months, return to that same shrub or tree and see how your pruned area has developed based upon your pruning technique. Start small until you are comfortable and confident in what you are doing. There are many books, online articles, and resources to refer to in making the right decisions on timing and techniques. And, as always, our experienced staff at Stephens Landscaping Professionals is here if you want your pruning expertly taken care of.
