Spring has sprung!

 Hello customers, neighbors, and fellow gardeners! 

Let's talk about starting our season.   

First thing we need to talk about is winter-time cleanup.   You're going to find lots of branches, leaves, growth, dirt runoff, gutter runoff, gutters to clean, roofs to blow off, pressure-washing to do, and all the things that go with maintaining your property.

Sound like a lot?  Sure.  It is alot!   You can keep it up yourself, you can use clean-up as a good punishment for your children (LOL), or you can hire someone to do it.  If you use the same guy during the summer, and keep him on during the winter, you won't have as much cleanup to do, because he will do that for you.  

If you do your own lawn maintenance and gardening, you need to maintain your equipment.  Before you can do anything at all, you need to make sure that your lawn equipment - mower, string-trimmer, blower - it all needs to be woken up from it's long winter's nap.   You'll need to clean your gas tanks, and flush the fuel system.  You need to check and change oil, oil filter, fuel filter, and air filter.   Yes, you're starting to think this sounds like maintenance that you do on your car.   It's very similar.  They both have gasoline-operated engines which need to be maintained similarly.    Keep your blades, belts, hoses, and chains cleaned and maintained.  While you're working on  your blades, keep in mind that that also means chainsaw chains, drive belts, blade belts, weedeater heads, and spark plugs.  

Now you're ready to mow, trim, edge, and blow off the debris!   Yay!  

If your lawn is irrigated, now would be a good time to fertilize as soon as your irrigation starts for the year.  If your yard isn't irrigated, you want to make at least two cuts before putting down your fertilizer.  You want to do that when it's close to rain, or if you can water yourself.  If the fertilizer just sits on your lawn with no water, it will burn up your dry grass.   It has no moisture to keep the nitrogen and the phosphates from burning your plants.    Now for those that don't have an irrigated lawn - keep this in mind.  Fertilize the same day as rain is in the forecast.  You don't want to let the fertilizer sit on your lawn for more than 24 hours, or it will damage your grass.  If the rain doesn't come as forecast, grab your garden hose and saturate your lawn really well after putting down the fertilizer.  

About two or three weeks before bugs start coming in would be a good time to lime your yard if you choose to do so.  It will help prevent excess bugs, like worms, fleas, ticks, and will greatly reduce the risk of mosquitos.   It will not keep them all away, but it will reduce them.   

The first month, you should have your flower beds cleaned, pruned, weeded, and mulched.  That way, everything is clean and ready for when you want to plant.  Later on, we will talk about what to plant, and when.  Now is also a good time to start trimming your hedges and bushes.   Prune your low-lying limbs.   Do your first major flower bed clean up.

Porches and patios also need to be cleaned from the winter-time.  This is rushing headlong into patio season, so you want to make sure that your porches, patios, and decks are repaired, cleaned, and pressure-washed, and then resealed.   

If you're in western Jackson, Madison, Morgan, or Limestone county, and you'd like a free quote, just give us a call at 256-819-4992.   We can do all this for you, and all you will have to do is relax with a nice cold drink.  We will handle the hard stuff!