Smart Steps to Follow to Get Your Albuquerque Lawn & Garden Ready for Spring 2023
Follow these procedures to ensure that your lawn and Albuquerque lawn are ready for spring 2023. There are only two months left of winter, so it’s time to put away the snow shovels and start planning for spring jobs like sprucing up your grass. After months of dormancy under a layer of ice and snow, your grass, shrubs, and trees may be weak and hungry due to winter weather. If you follow these wise instructions, they will grow thicker and lusher.
Clean up the house.
As the first step in getting your lawn ready for spring, raking up the leaves, twigs, and other debris accumulated over the winter is essential. Rakes do the job, but air blowers make the job much simpler. As well as preventing fertilizers and other ingredients from being absorbed by the lawn, debris can clog your lawn mower and cause it to break down.
Start by spreading some fertilizer, pre-emergent, and finally, weed killer.
In the early spring, apply a mixture of fertilizer, which feeds your grass, and pre-emergent, a herbicide used to prevent crabgrass. Six to eight weeks after the initial application, reapply both treatments together with a broadleaf weed killer. You don’t want crabgrass to grow; otherwise, you’ll be fighting it all season, as Laflamme puts it. He says you may save money and effort by using a lawn care product that serves as both a pre-emergent and weed killer.
Start mowing early and keep mowing often.
In the spring, homeowners often make the error of just cutting the grass once a week. He cautions against letting the grass get too tall before cutting it, saying that doing so will prevent healthy root development and subsequent plant reproduction. For lusher grass, skip the weekly mowings and do it every five days throughout the first six weeks of spring.
Choose a thick, dense mulch.
After mowing the grass, you should edge out the beds, prune the shrubs, and reapply the mulch. Hardwood bark mulches are Laflamme’s first choice over the ground, brown-dyed wood chips. Besides being more aesthetically pleasing, they also have increased durability.
Reduce tree size.
To determine whether or not a tree has dead branches, it is necessary to climb it. Leaves and debris from dead branches can fall and cause harm or damage to property if not removed. It’s a good idea to have a professional tree trimmer do a “safety prune” once every three years, preferably before the leaves emerge, and it’s harder to miss any damage.
It’s best to wait until October to plant seeds.
It’s tempting to cover up bare spots by sowing grass seed, but doing so will be futile if you also use a pre-emergent or weed killer. To remedy this, fertilize the lawn, and new shoots will emerge within a few weeks to cover the bare patches. A better alternative to waiting for the brown spots to disappear is to replace them with sod.