Insight To Keep A Healthy Landscaped Yard All Year Long
As a homeowner, it is your responsibility to take the best care of your property and its landscaping. From weeding and fertilizing in the spring, mowing through the summer, and fall cleanup before winter arrives, there are a lot of different tasks to keep you busy all year. Here are some landscape maintenance recommendations to help you get a good-looking yard that stays healthy all year long.
Fertilize Your Landscape Plants
Coming out of winter and a season of dormancy, your landscaping is going to need some nutrient supplementation to help them during their spring regrowth and regeneration. And the best way to do this is to apply landscape fertilizers and compost to put the required food back into the soil for your plants to grow from.
After your lawn has begun to sprout up, apply fertilizer to provide these required nutrients to your lawn, especially with extra nitrogen content to help the lawn plant grow thickly. When you apply a fertilizer that contains slow-release nutrients, it will more easily be able to saturate the soil for your lawn to use. This also avoids runoff and loss of your fertilizer when you irrigate your lawn or after a rainstorm, which also keeps the fertilizers from getting into your local waterways.
In addition to fertilizing your lawn, make sure you also apply some fertilizers to your vegetation, including shrubbery, flowers, and trees. Add some plant fertilizer onto the soil by sprinkling it from a spade or a handheld fertilizer disperser, then work the fertilizer into the soil to combine it through and get it deeply into the soil. A rich compost or bagged manure are also good options to fertilize the soil, then cover the worked-in soil with a layer of mulch to protect the soil and fertilizer.
Manage the Mulch Layer
Once you apply a layer of mulch, it is important that you keep it maintained throughout the year and into the next season. Mulch is not a material you can spread and forget because it can become scattered around from wind, rain, and animal activity.
Check the mulch periodically to make sure it still is a couple of inches deep over the soil. Otherwise, the soil will become exposed and your soil susceptible to drying out from the sun and moisture loss in addition to weed growth. Mulch made of wood chips, bark, and other organic materials will break down over time and add nutrients back to the soil, so you need to replenish them every few months to cover thin spots.
