Spring is a fantastic time of year for keen gardeners. It’s obviously when everything starts to bloom and to blossom, and it can often be a fantastic feeling when you get to this part of the year after a long and particularly cold winter. If you are still learning about your garden and how to make it thrive, you may be wondering what you can do to ensure that you are going to do so as well as possible, and that means knowing what to do in your garden during the spring in particular.
In this post, then, we are going to discuss some of the main things that you might want to do in order to improve your garden and work on it in spring. All of the following are great ideas to take on board and could help you to really have a much better approach to your garden in the spring, as well as ensuring it is going to look its best for the rest of the year as well.
Clean and Prepare
Hopefully you will already have done a little of this during the autumn and winter fallow months, but there is often still a little bit left to do during the spring as well. It’s important, because cleaning your garden is going to help ensure that you are ready to do whatever you want with it, and it’s just one of those preparatory things that you are going to find really useful to do. So with that in mind, what kind of things might you want to prepare and clean in your garden when it comes to spring time?
Before you plant anything new, clear away any dead leaves or broken branches, and any debris that might have accumulated over the winter. Cut back your perennials and remove any dead plants entirely, and consider whether you might want to freshen up the mulch a little. Any raised beds you might have could be checked for damage and repaired as necessary.
If you can do just these simple things, you are going to find that you are much more ready for the rest of the garden work that can be necessary in spring.
Test and Work On Your Soil
The soil is obviously hugely important too, and it’s something that you can work on if you want to make sure that you are going to be giving your garden some new health for the new season. In fact, healthy soil is the foundation of a productive garden, and it’s something that you are going to want to work on if you are keen on trying to have a healthy space that you can really enjoy as well.
This means you’ll need to test the pH of your soil as well as its nutrient levels, and you can do this using a simple home testing kit or a local service. It might be that your soil is imbalanced, that it requires compost or well-rotted manure to get it back to life, and in fact it’s generally worth adding this each year regardless. You’ll get a soil with much more structure and fertility this way, so it’s something that you should certainly think about. If necessary, adjust the pH with lime or sulphur, to raise or lower it respectively.
Check On Bulbs
Hopefully, all being well, you would have thought ahead and planted some flower bulbs for spring in the autumn. If you did, now is the time to check them, and to see how they are coming along. They should be showing through the soil at the start of spring, and then you should start to see them flowering, and usually they are not going to require too much care at this stage. However, do make sure that you have checked the soil as above, and consider checking that the bulbs have enough moisture around them, watering them if not. You might also want to use some organic fertilizer once they start really growing.
Essentially you just want to make sure you are giving them a quick check to ensure that they are doing well. Once you are happy that they are, you can usually leave them to it for a good while.
Get Pruning
Early spring is usually the best time to prune a lot of trees and shrubs, before they put out their new growth shoots for the year. This is a simple case of removing dead or diseased branches first, shaping the shrubs into whatever kind of neat shape you like, and cutting back overgrown perennials where necessary too. Be careful with your spring-flowering plants – you’ll want to prune them right after they bloom to avoid cutting off any flower buds. But in general, this kind of pruning is going to be vital to ensure that your garden is much more ready for the spring, and it can actually be an important part of that cleaning up stage that we mentioned briefly earlier on.
Plan Your Year’s Garden
It’s now a good time to start thinking about what you are going to do with the garden this coming year, and to start planning for that. Spring is the ideal time to plant cool-season vegetables like lettuce, spinach, peas, radishes, and carrots. If the last frost has passed, start warm-season crops such as tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers. The point is that you’ll want to make sure you are planning your garden as well as you can. You should also consider whether you might want to plant some spring bulbs now if you didn’t do so in the autumn.
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