What to do with your lawn & plants after the winter season
I know, I know we are still in the midst of winter BUT the Southern California living makes it so easy to see the warmth and sunshine at the end of the all together fairly few rainy days and temperatures that don’t drop below 40 degrees during our Cal-winter season. Even though we are very lucky to be living in a pretty much stable-all-year-around kind of climate, our landscape still takes a bit of a toll after the rainy and colder than usual seasons. I will give you guys a few easy tips and tricks to make sure that your lawn and other planting, veggies, fruit trees and so on will thrive to their best possibilities this year.
I know we talked about overseeding the lawn during fall (take a look at one of our recent blogs) but spring is also an excellent time to do that. Make sure while overseeding to add a thin layer of nutrient rich top soil.
Fertilizer. It is so important to feed your lawn and other plants fertilizer after they went through a stressful season. It is also important to keep in mind that fertilizer needs to be moist, so regular watering in the morning time is a must for the fertilizer to absorb and work.
Make sure to groom your grass so that it is exposed to sun light and can absorb water and nutrients easier, any fallen leaves, pine needles and so on should be cleaned up regularly.
Aerating the lawn is also a wonderful and easy method to loosen the soil and allow for minerals, water and nutrients to soak into the soil evenly to be absorbent for your plants.
For your veggie garden start with making sure your soil is ready. Add organic matter and compost after removing protective coverings if you put one on over the winter. Add seeds to your soil in early spring (this is true for California climates. 8 weeks before the last frost is also a good rule of thumb) to make sure that the timing is good for the little seedlings to grow. Seed packages all include a Zone guide on the back that shows for which region which seeding times are suggested. You can also use some already pre-grown veggies (Home Depot has a pretty good selection on both, seeds and plants).
For any established plants and flowers it is a great idea to add a fresh bed of mulch to make sure that they will come back and thrive.
Last but not least: Now is the best time to remove all sorts of weeds since those will take the nutrients, water and space that you want to keep for your lawn, veggies and other plants.
It is fun to see some before and after pictures so make sure to document your landscape during the process.
