The Professional Expert

Spring Yard Maintenance

If you live where it freezes outside, you can turn your outside faucets back on. Flush them out for a few seconds to get the bugs out. Then you are ready to hook up the hoses. 

You will want to check out the hoses for cracking at the ends and any other damage that you missed last fall when you put them up for the winter.  Look for washers inside the connection when you hook them to the faucet, if it is missing or hard and brittle you should replace it.  Your local home improvement store has them in the lawn and garden section with all of the hose nozzles and sprinklers.

This is also a good time to do your lawn mower maintenance.  There are shops that your garden center can recommend which will do a “tune up” for $100 or so.  They will change the spark plug, sharpen the blade, replace the oil, and check the general condition of the mower.  If you do any of this stuff on your car, you can do it on your mower. We will cover how to do that tomorrow.

You can also get out your other lawn tools, such as the edger and weed whacker. Check them over, start them up, and let them run for a few minutes.  If you can’t get them started, you can get them fixed before you need them – this way they are ready when you need them.

Now head out into the yard. Check for any damage that happened over the winter, broken branches, damaged gutters and downspouts.

If you are going to, this is the time to apply “pre-emergent” weed preventers to your lawn.  These prevent seeds from sprouting, so be careful where you apply it.  These products do a pretty good job of reducing the number of weeds in your lawn.  Be sure to follow the manufacturer’s directions carefully and only use the amount specified, as the excess will end up in the local water supply.  Do not use this stuff if you are going to over-seed.

What is over-seeding?  In some climates (check with your garden center) you will want to over-seed, which is planting additional grass seed over the existing grass.  This will thicken up the lawn, fill in thin spots.  There are directions on the package for how heavily to spread the seed.

Tomorrow we’ll cover that lawn mower tune-up…

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