March Maintenance Checklist for Lawn & Gardens

March is when spring officially starts, meaning it’s the time when you should start making sure that your lawn and garden are ready for the growing season. The condition of your landscape in early spring sets the tone for the rest of the year. By taking a few smart maintenance steps now, you’ll help your lawn and garden to be healthier and look more polished in the coming weeks and throughout the summer.

Start by Inspecting Your Garden

Early spring is when you should start looking for any issues with your landscaping and areas that require additional attention or cleanup before the growth really starts to take off. When inspecting everything, you should check for winter damage, such as broken branches that need to be pruned, along with things like weak growth, poor drainage, and thinning turf in the lawn. Cleaning any beds that are filled with leaf litter and organic debris is crucial for promoting healthy growth and avoiding problems with pests and diseases attacking plants.

Refresh Mulch in Key Areas

Adding more mulch to garden beds and bare ground around trees and shrubs in the early spring provides numerous benefits. For starters, the new mulch enhances the appearance of the landscape. A layer of new mulch also helps the soil to hold moisture to support plant health and reduce the amount of watering you need to do. Mulching prevents weeds from germinating as well, helping to cut down on the amount of maintenance you need to do.

While refreshing your mulch in the spring is always important, it’s also beneficial to do it again in the late fall or early winter. One reason is that the mulch helps insulate the ground to protect roots from freezing. Mulch also continually breaks down and adds nutrients to the soil. The more often you add new mulch, the healthier the soil will be.

Tidy Up Trees and Shrubs

Doing a bit of gentle pruning to trees and shrubs encourages healthier growth and enhances their appearance. You should always start by cutting out weak, damaged, or diseased branches. From there, you should start pruning poorly placed growth to give a plant a more uniform shape and trimming overcrowded growth to improve airflow. It’s always best to prune before spring growth takes off to minimize stress on the plants and prevent disease and pest issues. You also want to make sure to only prune as much as necessary, as aggressive pruning can damage plants and lead to unhealthy, stunted growth.

Wake Up the Lawn With Early-Season Attention

Once your lawn starts coming back to life, you need to start considering how you’re going to care for it throughout the rest of the year. Early turf care helps a lawn to get off to a better start and ensures it is as healthy as possible.

You should always start by evaluating the lawn’s condition so you can address issues like crabgrass and thin or struggling areas before they worsen. Tackling crabgrass before it starts taking off gives you a better chance of eliminating it. If there are any thin areas or weak growth, reseeding the lawn in early spring is important to ensure the new roots establish themselves before it gets too hot.

Early spring is also the ideal time to fertilize your lawn for the first time. Ideally, you want to fertilize once the grass starts to green, before the first peak growth window in late spring. It’s a good idea to then fertilize it again in early fall before the second peak growth window.

Check Irrigation Before the Busy Season

If you have a sprinkler system or a drip irrigation system for garden beds and other features, you want to make sure to check its performance before the weather gets hot and your watering demand greatly increases. With your lawn, you want to make sure that the sprinklers provide full coverage with as little overspray as possible. You also want to check for any leaky sprinkler heads, as they waste water and can kill the surrounding grass. Landscaping companies start getting much busier the warmer the weather gets. By identifying any irrigation issues early on, you can get them fixed before the busy season arrives to ensure your landscape is ready to handle the heat.

Make a Plan for Ongoing Spring Maintenance

Spring landscape maintenance doesn’t just mean doing a quick one-day cleanup. For the best results, you want to plan for the entire season to make sure you stay ahead of mowing, fertilization, pruning, mulching and weeding. That way, you don’t risk getting bogged down and waiting too long to handle crucial early-season tasks like pruning and cleaning out beds.

When It Makes Sense to Bring in a Professional

Cleaning out garden beds, fertilizing, and other basic maintenance tasks are things you can easily handle on your own. If your property needs more than a simple cleanup, it’s always worth enlisting the help of an experienced, professional landscape team. This is especially the case if you’re dealing with more serious lawn issues that require expert turf care, you have numerous trees and shrubs that need extensive pruning, you want to refresh all of your mulch, or you need support with your irrigation and drainage. A professional landscaper can also perform a full spring refresh to greatly improve the health and appearance of your entire lawn and garden.

Get Your Yard and Garden Ready for Spring With Wheat’s Landscape

Since 1976, Wheat’s Landscape has been helping homeowners with all of their maintenance needs. From seasonal mulching and pruning to spring cleanups and lawn care, we can provide everything you need to ensure your landscape looks beautiful all spring and summer long. 

To schedule spring landscape maintenance and lawn care services in the Northern Virginia, Maryland, and DC area before the season gets busy, contact us today.