While winter in Calgary can seem to last forever, each day brings you closer to spring. Whether you’re a keen gardener and relish the preparatory season out in your yard, or just someone who enjoys making the most of the warmer months, it’s easy to get excited when the snow starts to melt.
For most people, the lawn is the centrepiece of the whole yard, and the area where most Calgary homeowners will spend time, effort and money to get it looking its best. It might be that you just want a safe space for your kids to run around during the summer, or maybe your lawn is the backdrop to your beautiful flowers and garden beds. In either case, spring is the best time to revitalize your lawn.
Start With a Spring Yard Cleanup
The first step in revitalizing your lawn in time for summer is to go through a full spring cleanup. Start with a simple pass across your lawn, picking up branches, twigs and other winter debris that comes out of the melted snowpack. This will allow all the snowmelt and April showers to drain fully into your soil, as well as allowing sunlight to hit your lawn and kickstart the photosynthesis process in your grass.
Next, find all the patches of dead leaves that didn’t break down over winter because they froze solid, and remove them carefully without ripping up too much grass. If the thatched leaves don’t come up easily, then you’re probably trying to work while the ground is still frozen so you might need to wait a while.
The final step in your spring yard cleanup is to work around the edges, pruning back branches and shrubs that are overhanging your lawn so that you have plenty of space to work in. Likewise, weed your borders so that you’re not fighting that battle all season long. Adding a quick layer of mulch to these border areas also helps to slow weed growth down, leaving you to focus on your lawn.
Essential Spring Lawn Care Tips
With your spring cleanup taken care of, it’s then time to undertake your spring lawn care preparation. It can be hard to know where to begin, so here’s a step by step guide to give your lawn the best start for the long summer season:
- Aeration – aeration is a vastly underrated technique to help your lawn out, but if you do it at the start of each spring season, you’ll be amazed at the long term benefits it brings. Simply put, aerating your soil is the process of breaking up the top layer which can easily be compacted by the snow and ice, and it allows air, water and heat to penetrate deeper into the soil earlier in the season to nourish the deep roots. You can do this with a normal rake, or rent a specific aerator which will do a better and more thorough job.
- Fertilise – with the soil ready for feeding, it’s time to fertilise. There are many different options with different combinations of phosphorus, potassium and potassium, but a general lawn fertiliser will usually do the trick for most Calgary homeowners. You can get your soil analysed to see what nutrients it truly needs so you can give a good kick start. No matter what you feed your soil, the trick is to make sure you get a even spread, as concentrated fertiliser can be damaging to your soil.
- Overseed – next up is to tend to any bald patches on your garden. If you’ve done your aerating and fertilising right, then getting seeds to grow in these spaces should be relatively easy. It’s important to overseed, meaning that you throw down more seeds than necessary for the space, relying on the fact that each grass seed type has a less than 100% germination rate. You can increase your chances of success by buying a seed mat, which is a layer of straw with seeds embedded. The straw acts as both mulch for the seeds as well as protection from your garden birds looking for a spring snack.
- Watering – your spring watering schedule is going to depend on the weather and the number of spring showers. When there’s been a day or two without rain, you’ll want to bring the garden hose, especially on the areas where you’ve overseeded or felt the need to add extra fertiliser. As a rough guide, your spring lawn needs around 5 cm of water a week to allow for deep root growth, so you may also want to invest in a rain gauge so you can make sure that you’re not over or underwatering.
- Mowing – finally, with all of these pieces in play, setting your mowing schedule is an essential piece of the puzzle. You’ll want to hold off on your first mow of the year until the grass reaches around 10 cm: cutting before then stops each blade’s ability to generate the sugars and energy they’ll need for growth during the summer. Avoid mowing when the ground is wet as you’ll pack down the soil as well as clogging up your mower blades, and keep the grass at a longish length until the weather starts to get warm on a regular basis.
Work With The Professionals
If all of this work seems like a lot of effort, then it’s time to consider working with the lawn care specialists at Scoop Cut N Shovel. With the right combination of subscriptions, we’ll take care of everything from your spring clean up to lawn preparation and mowing services. You can extend this ease of mind by subscribing to our summer mowing packages meaning that your lawn will look fantastic from the last of the snowmelt to the first fall frost. For complete ease of mind, talk to our team of experts about our year round property maintenance subscription, which gives you access to all our services including pet waste removal, snow and ice removal and a full lawn and garden care package.