Denny's Soapbox

Let’s Take a Walk

Spring officially begins next Saturday. How did your outdoor living area fair with all the cold, very wet weather? Let’s go outdoors and take a look.

• Take note of how wet the lawn and planting beds are. Limit your foot traffic on your lawn until the ground dries out a little.

• If you didn’t winter seed your lawn, apply pre-emergent weed seed control with fertilizer in March or April. Use the product containing the herbicide Prodiamine, and receive up to 8 months control of weed seed germination. For those that have grass seed down, wait until germination of that seed before applying this product.

• Remove any leaves from around your shrubs and perennials.

• Cut back all the old stems on those perennials, cut all your roses (except climbers) to 8-10” from the ground

• All ornamental grasses should be cut back to the ground. Tie the bundles of blades together and wrap some masking tape to hold the bundle together. Cut off bundle with a saw or grass trimmer.

• Check your shrubs and smaller trees for broken stems or branches. Trim off just below the break.

• Do not trim back any Clematis vine or large leaf Hydrangea. It’s too early to tell what is dead or alive.

• Another big ‘no no’ is the application of new mulch. It is way too wet and new mulch will cause the excess moisture to remain. Loosen any old mulch to help the soil dry, but wait several weeks to apply any new mulching material.

• Go ahead and apply a weed seed killer (Dimension or Preen) to all your planting beds following the instructions on the container.

• Now is a great time to apply Fertilome Systemic Soil Drench around the base of any Rose, Azalea, and Boxwood to take care of any insects all season with just one application to the soil. Remember, all those holes in your Knockout leaves last year? They were caused by the Rose Slug and this one treatment will eliminate that problem.

• If you would want to add any new plants to your landscape, now would be a great time to take some pictures of the area and some measurements as well and talk to your local year-round garden centre. They can design some improvements to the site so that when the planting conditions are right, you are ready to get started.

Next week I will give you the names of some new plant varieties for you to check out.