Spring time always feels like a fresh beginning in Calgary. The long snowy months make you wonder whether you’ll ever see green grass again, or be able to step outside without your face freezing from the cold. However, as spring rolls around, the feeling of freshness and growth is unmistakable, and many Calgarians talk about the gardening frenzy that overtakes them on the first warm day of the year. The prospect of tackling your yard after months spent trapped inside is intoxicating: the ability to bring forth all your winter dreams, learn from last year’s mistakes and finally have the yard of your dreams are all springtime goals for any Calgary homeowners.
A Spring Cleanup Checklist
Once the excitement has cooled into determined action, it’s easy to get overwhelmed when you’re looking around your yard at the havoc that winter has wrought. It can also be hard to know where to start with your plans, so the following is a spring clean up checklist to get your yard off to the best possible start.
Start With The Beds
You’ve always got to be on the lookout for the easy wins when it comes to your spring clean up, and your garden beds are the best place to start. This is especially true if you did a thorough job of weeding and mulching as part of your fall preparations. Your first step is to clear away any debris that has fallen on your beds or got blown there during the winter storms, before temporarily removing any synthetic coverings that you put in place to protect weaker plants. The next step is to feed your soil from the top down. This can be as simple as adding a layer of new topsoil mixed with some fertilizer, but can also include compost or enriched mulch. Whatever your strategy, the top down feeding is preferable to digging up the top soil as it preserves the microbial ecosystem and all new nutrients will naturally seep down to the roots. Finish this part of your spring clean up by adding mulch across all bare soil, and around the roots of your trees and shrubs to prevent excessive water evaporation in the warming sunshine.
Take On The Lawn
Once your garden beds are looking ready for a solid growing season, the next step is to carefully examine the damage done to your lawn by the long winter months. Hopefully your fall lawncare preparation means that your grass springs back quickly once it’s exposed to sun and warmth, but you still might find some bald patches and thatching that needs to be taken care of. Your first step is to run a hard rake over your entire lawn to remove compacted leaves and debris and to provide a simple aeration to allow the topsoil to drain the remaining snow melt and first spring rains. Next, take a quick growing grass seed and fertilizer mix to your bald patches, and add some mulch in the form of straw to protect the new seeds from birds and mice. Finally, make sure you water these patches (and your entire lawn) frequently, aiming for about an inch a week in combination to whatever rainfall comes your way.
Pick One Landscaping Project
With both of your main growing sections up and running, it’s time to turn to your winter dreams and pick one landscaping project that you’ve been planning during the cold winter nights. This might be creating a new garden bed, adding a tree or two or something more adventurous like adding a pond or patio area to change up the dynamics of how you use your yard. No matter your choice of landscaping project, the challenge is to pick one, plan it out and execute it fully before you even think about a second. This is because the rest of your property still needs your attention and your springs and summer maintenance to do lists will quickly fill up leaving you less time for the new project.
Getting Professional Help
The above checklists can feel like a wonderful challenge to take on after being cooped up all winter. However, it can also feel like a set of chores that threaten to consume all your free time. If the latter is true for you, then it’s time to get some professional spring cleanup services to get you started. Here at Scoop Cut-N-Shovel, we have a variety of spring cleanup subscriptions to get you started once the last snow has melted.
One Time Services
We offer three levels of a one time spring cleanup, including blowing out the debris from your garden beds, raking your entire lawn and providing an initial cut and trim to kick start your checklists. This is a great option if you got overwhelmed by the initial workload, but have a solid plan for how to keep everything going throughout the warm months. We also bag up all our green waste for you and for a small fee per bag will take it with us to leave your property clean and ready for spring.
Ongoing Maintenance
Another option is to subscribe to our ongoing garden maintenance program. This is billed hourly and will be created to give you a bespoke spring cleanup maintenance system that frees you up to take on the bigger projects. As part of this service, we can take on the garden bed cleanup as laid out above, take care of your pruning and trimming needs as well as working on your flower pot and landscaping projects to help you get professional looking results.
Bundle To Save
All of Scoop Cut-N-Shovel’s subscription packages can be combined to give you a more rounded spring cleanup service, and we offer discounts with each additional subscription you pick. Our best value comes from the year round property maintenance service which includes spring and fall cleanups, ongoing garden bed maintenance, full summer lawncare and snow and ice removal throughout the entire winter. This package gives you peace of mind no matter the season and gives you time to enjoy your property throughout the best that Calgary weather has to offer.