Knowing what and when to do everything needed to maintain a lawn and landscape can be overwhelming for some homeowners. We created our simple lawn & landscape maintenance guide to clarify lawn and landscape needs from wants with advice on removing any stress related to keeping your property beautifully maintained.
Separate Lawn & Landscape Needs From Wants
Some lawn & landscape maintenance tasks must be done and other tasks are more ‘wants’ than needs. Let’s take a look at what must be done to maintain your lawn and landscape and separate tasks that can wait.
Must-do lawn & landscape maintenance tasks:
- Routine lawn mowing during the growing season
- A Spring or Fall lawn & landscape cleanup
We’ve oversimplified the ‘must-do’ lawn & landscape work because if you OK with your lawn and landscape appearing a little unkept, mowing the lawn when needed and performing a single yearly cleanup could be all you have to do.
We like making lawns and landscapes look great at Spokane’s Finest Lawns. Let’s take a look at what else you can do if you also care about the appearance of your lawn and landscape.
Optional yard work for increased curb appeal:
- Lawn fertilizer and weed control applications
- Treat and pull weeds from landscape beds at least once per month
- Spread fresh mulch in landscape beds
- Prune plant material as needed each quarter
- Perform a Spring and Fall cleanup
- Collect and remove all leaves in the late fall or early winter
- Water your lawn manually or maintain your sprinkler system
We are focusing on ‘maintenance’ tasks, not lawn or landscape upgrades like redesigning your landscape or adding a retaining wall, fire or water feature, or landscape lighting.
When you think about the maintenance aspect of your lawn and landscape without potential upgrades, lawn care already get a little easier! Let’s expand on our bullet-point lawn and landscape maintenance tasks noted above.
The Lawn Must Be Cut & The Landscape Beds Tended To
Most cities or counties have ordinances requiring property owners to maintain their lawn and landscape. Spokane County, WA is certainly one of those counties.
If you have a lawn with grass in it, you will have to cut your lawn one way or another. In Spokane, where we operate our local lawn care company, the grass goes dormant over the winter months. This makes lawn mowing spring, summer, and fall task. Weekly mowing is often needed to keep the grass from becoming too long in between each mowing. You can hire a lawn service like us to mow your lawn or buy the equipment needed. A push mower, weed eater, and leaf blower are all you need to mow most lawns along with your time! Cutting your grass regularly will not only keep the city or county from fining you, it will also make your neighbors happy.
Landscapes usually don’t require as much care as lawns to keep them looking presentable. At a bare minimum, someone is going to have to whip the landscape back into shape each year. A homeowner can often do this with basic lawn tools such as a pruning device or two, a rake, and a wheelbarrow or contractor bags. You can also hire a local landscaper like Spokane’s Finest Lawns to do this too. Cities and counties are more relaxed when it comes to their enforcement of overgrown and unmaintained landscapes. The must-dos when it comes to maintaining your landscape beds and plants include pulling or treating weeds, trimming shrubs back into shape, and removing leaves and fallen limbs. Pulled weeds and clippings from trimmed bushes will need to be collected and removed just like any leaves or fallen limbs.
Easy Things You Can Do To Make Your Lawn & Landscape Look Great
Hopefully, you aren’t the bare minimum type when it comes to lawn and landscape maintenance! Let’s get you more important info about some things you can do to take your lawn and landscape to the next level.
Fertilization & Weed Control
Lawn treatments can make a world of difference to the appearance of your lawn. It’s best to apply fertilizer at a lower rate multiple times throughout the growing season and spray herbicide products to prevent weeds and remove existing weeds from your lawn. If you’re only going to fertilize once per year, apply a heavy rate of high-nitrogen fertilizer to the lawn right before it goes dormant in the fall.
Proper Landscape Bed Maintenance
Mulch usually is looking pretty rough after a whole year has past. Spreading a fresh layer of mulch over your landscape beds is definitely recommended at least once per year. Mulch helps retain moisture in the soil which benefits the plants in your landscape beds and can suppress weeds a little bit. Weeds are weeds because they don’t need much to thrive! That’s why we recommend planning on weeding and cleaning up landscape beds once per month during the growing season.
Plant Maintenance
All plants obviously grow and some need more attention than others. Some plants should be pruned at a certain time during their growth cycle during the year. Flowering plants are a perfect example. If you were to prune a flowering shrub weeks before it was going to bloom, you probably just cut off most of the flower buds! We recommend pruning once per quarter at a minimum to ensure all plants are trimmed back at the proper time. Many of our customers have us maintain their landscape beds monthly so their plants get pruned even closer to the ideal time.
Perform A Spring & Fall Cleanup
Performing both a spring and fall cleanup is much better than picking one or the other. If we had to choose, we’d say the fall cleanup is a little more important because during the fall clean up any fallen leaves should be collected and removed. If the leaves are left to decompose in your lawn or landscape all winter long, the chances are high disease or fungus will present itself and can cause some serious damage to plants and turf. Even if you perform a thorough fall cleanup an additional dedicated leaf removal service may be needed weeks or a month or two later to collect and remove any additional leaves that were slow to fall from your trees or that have blown into your lawn or landscape. By the time Spring rolls back around we are willing to bet there are more leaves that could be collected and removed, some sticks and branches are in the lawn and landscape that should be picked up, and winter annual weeds are present in your landscape beds.
Watering Your Lawn
Summer stress can quickly diminish the hard work and money you’ve spent maintaining your lawn and landscape. Watering your lawn as needed over the summer months is a great way to protect your investment. When you water, remember to ‘water deep, not often.’ This means instead of watering each area of your lawn for 15 minutes 3 times per week, water each area of your lawn for 45 minutes 1 time per week. This will encourage a healthy, deep root system. If you have a sprinkler system, watering your lawn is made super easy, all you have to do is maintain your sprinkler system which includes opening and shutting down your irrigation system in the spring and fall and replacing any broken components throughout the year.
Now Your Ready To Maintain Your Lawn & Landscape Like A Pro
Whether you are the DIY type or are looking to hire a lawn and landscape service provider to handle these chores for you, we hope you found some value in this information. If you are a DIY weekend warrior, we hope you have a better game plan to attack your lawn and landscape this season. If you are seeking to hire a lawn and landscape service, we hope you have a better idea of what services you would like to request quotes for.
We are accepting new customers in Spokane, Spokane Valley, and Liberty Lake, WA. If you would like a free estimate from us, please request your free estimate online now or call us for your free estimate!