Around the Home — Gardening — Expert Article
Community Expert: Home Gardening Chris Olson
What Spring Brings With spring comes warmer weather, plants waking up and coming back to life, longer days, and spending lots of time outside. It’s the time to start planting, repotting, and fertilizing. It’s almost too good to be true. There’s a lot that goes on in the spring, so here are a few tips and tricks to help you get ready for it. Early spring is the best time to get started with lawn care. Once the snow melts, you can start to fertilize your lawn and start treating weeds. March and April is when you will want to get started on the first step of the Fertilome Lawn Care Program called Crabgrass Preventer Plus Lawn Food. It should be applied early; before any weeds are present. In April and May, you can get started on the next step: Weed Out Plus Lawn Fertilizer. Apply this when your lawn is wet and water it in after 24 hours. Spring is the best time to start fertilizing your trees and shrubs. A great option for fertilizing your trees and shrubs is a time release fertilizer. This is a granular fertilizer that you can put on top of the soil around the base of your plant. As you water, it will slowly release the nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium into the root system of your plant. Simply apply it evenly, mix it into the top few inches of soil, and continue to water as you normally would. This type of fertilizer is great because you only have to apply it every few months. Fruit trees will start to bud out in the spring. Because
of this, you shouldn’t do any pruning. It’s best to prune fruit trees when they are completely dormant (January or February). Something great you can do for your fruit trees in the spring is apply dormant spray. This is something that won’t hurt your tree and will smother any eggs of potential insects. This helps kill any bugs that might be on your tree and prevents it from getting more. Apply this when you can see buds on your tree, but before they start to swell. In the spring, you might start to notice a lot more new growth on your houseplants. This is because they are coming out of their winter dormancy and are ready to start growing. It’s almost like they wake up and kick into gear. Spring brings longer days and more sunshine, which makes for happy houseplants. Spring is the best time to start fertilizing your houseplants, and you can continue to fertilize through the summer months. This is also the best time to do any pruning, repotting, or propagating. Here in Utah, we get extra excited about spring because it’s when we get to plant our vegetable gardens and beautiful annual flowers. It is best to wait until Mother’s Day to plant these to avoid the possibility of them freezing. Usually after Mother’s Day there isn’t any more risk of frost. Hopefully some of these springtime tips were helpful to you and get you excited about what things come with spring!
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