As winter draws to a close, cooler weather fades away and Massachusetts residents are in for a treat as the landscape begins to wake up again.
As people start to shed layers and smile a little quicker as the sun shines down brighter and the days grow longer, your trees also begin their spring awakening.
For instance, you might see buds forming and even flowers on those early-blooming trees.
As your trees and plants wake up to the new season, now is the time to make sure they are properly prepared for the growing season.
While you’re doing your spring cleaning indoors, let’s talk about your outdoor spring cleaning checklist so you can ensure you – and your trees and landscape – are ready.
How to Plan For a Happy, Healthy Growing Season
Old Man Winter can leave behind quite a mess in his wake.
So a big part of caring for trees in spring is to take care of this mess at your Needham, Concord, Danvers, and Cape Cod home. You want to focus on four general categories: cleaning up trees, preparing trees for storms, addressing soil care issues, and inspecting the rest of your landscape.
The following tips can help you correctly carry out these key tasks as part of your spring outdoor checklist.
Tree Trimming and Shrub Pruning
Initially, your spring checklist starts with taking a moment to walk through your yard and check your trees as they begin to form buds and leaf out.
What are you looking for? Branches that are broken, cracked, or dead. These may appear as branches with no buds or dry buds compared to others that seem like they are budding normally.
This is a great time of year to prune those branches away, leaving room and energy for the healthy branches to continue growing. You can scrape away a bit of bark with your fingernail if you are unsure if the branch is dead or not. Green is alive, brown is dead.
Prepare Trees For Spring Storms
Next, your outdoor spring cleaning checklist should include making sure your trees are ready for spring storms. You want to do this to avoid scenarios like unnecessary branch breakage during high winds.
To do this right, your Massachusetts certified arborist will conduct a thorough tree inspection, looking for signs of stress and decay, as well as looking for weak or broken branches, checking soil health, and making sure there are no diseases present.
Based on their findings, they’ll conduct some tree pruning to ensure your tree can stand strong during winds and rains, as well as address any other issues to restore or maintain tree health. These services can include tree fertilization, soil improvement, disease management, and even adding tree support systems if your tree needs some extra branch support assistance.
These storm preparation tips give your tree the best start for dealing with whatever weather extremes the season may bring. Some flowering and fruit-bearing trees should not be pruned until after flowering has taken place. Otherwise, the bloom or harvest may be reduced. This is why we encourage hiring a certified, professional arborist.
Focus on Soil Health
You might find you want to focus on the tree from the trunk up, checking branches and looking up, up, and up all the way to the top to ensure it's in good health as part of your tree inspection.
But you’d be missing a key component in any plant’s growth: the soil. In fact, a lot of conditions you may see above ground are the result of issues below ground.
As a result, improving soil health can lead to better tree health. To do this, your Massachusetts certified arborist may conduct a soil test to look for pH imbalances or mineral deficiencies so he or she can target solutions to addressing any soil care issues.
Inspect Your Landscape
Now that your trees are taken care of, you don’t want to forget to look at your landscape beds and your grass as part of your spring lawn care checklist.
For your plant beds, adding a fresh layer of mulch not only provides a fresh appearance, but also suppresses weeds, maintains soil temperatures, retains soil moisture, and adds organic matter to the soil that plants can use.
For your lawn, slow-release spring fertilization can ensure your grass receives the nutrients it needs that your compacted soil may not be able to provide. Adding preemergent herbicides can help curb weeds like crabgrass that like to crop up at this time of year.
At Hartney Greymont, we have both ISA and Massachusetts certified arborists located in Needham, Concord, Danvers, Cape Cod, and the surrounding areas who can help you get your trees ready for spring.
Here’s Why You Should Hire a Certified Arborist For Your Tree Care
