How to prepare your garden for spring?

Winter is the time when most plants are at rest. However, when warmer days appear more and more often, life slowly returns to the garden. However, before spring arrives in it for good, beginning the phase of intensive plant growth, it is worth to prepare yourself properly. What work should be done before spring?

Spring care treatments are necessary if you want your garden to look its best for the rest of the year. Therefore, they cannot be underestimated. During this period, we should pay special attention to fruit and ornamental shrubs and lawns.

Shrub care

The basic care procedure in the pre-summer period is cutting plants, especially shrubs. This activity has a positive effect on their development, flowering and fruiting. It makes the flora grow more vigorously and is better nourished. Improper cutting can be counterproductive, however, in extreme cases leading to plants drying out and dying. How to perform them properly, then?

First of all, we need the right tool. Sharp and clean pruning shears are the perfect solution. It cuts the shoots evenly and smoothly, leaving no dirt or frayed fragments through which pathogenic pathogens could get inside the plant. On the market we will find, among others, the following models of tools:

• small hand pruning shears - suitable for cutting young and thin shoots,
• two-handed secateurs - perfect for thicker shoots and small branches,
• telescopic pruning shears - will be necessary for cutting higher branches.

The success of a treatment is not only affected by the type and proper preparation of the tools, but also by when the cut is made. The best time is February. However, it depends on the temperature. It should oscillate around zero degrees Celsius. If it is lower with the treatment it is worth to refrain until March. Otherwise, dangerous bacteria can penetrate the plant after cutting through frozen wounds.

With ornamental shrubs cutting it is worth to hold off until mid-March. They are extremely sensitive to frost. If you want to additionally protect cut plants, you can apply an antifungal agent to the wounds. But when you have a large garden, it can take a lot of time.

Lawn care

If you want your lawn to be beautifully green after winter resting, you need to do some maintenance, including but not limited to:

• scarifying - this treatment allows to remove felt, i.e. a compact layer of weeds and dead grass, which limits the access of air, water and nutrients to the soil, leading to the death of the lawn. We could use a scarifier for this purpose.

Depending on how big your lawn is, you can opt for a manual, electric, battery or combustion lawn scarifier. When choosing the optimal solution, you should take into account not only the size of the property, your own preferences or the price of the equipment, but also its usability, especially if you decide on an electric or combustion model.

• aeration - it consists in aerating the soil with a special device - aerator, which is also available on the market in the following variants: manual, electric, battery and exhaust gas.

Lawn care and cutting shrubs are the basic treatments that are worth doing before the coming of spring. Thanks to them, our garden will revitalize after the winter rest period and will look beautiful all year round.