Preparing Your Landscaping for Winter Like a Pro in Wappinger Falls NY and Poughquag NY Areas
When the ground starts to freeze it seems like any yard maintenance is out of the question. In the cold months, plants go dormant, snow covers and freezes on the grass and exposed ground, and any haphazard snow removal packs into massive piles that are hard to move sometimes all the way through ‘til late spring. While landscaping work through the growth of spring and dry heat of summer is essential to maintaining a landscape, work should continue through the fall and winter seasons to prepare for next year. Here are 4 tips on preparing your landscaping for winter like a Pro in Wappinger Falls, NY and Poughquag, NY areas.
Weeding Through the Winter
You’d think that all of your weeds start growing in spring and summer but many species in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast United States continue to grow through the winter. By scheduling weekly weed removal throughout the cold season your landscaping professionals can keep nutrients in the soil and use pre-emergent weed control in late winter to preemptively strike at weed root systems that will jump alive in the spring. This way, the plants that you want in your landscape won’t compete for water and nutrients and will have room to grow as the ground thaws. Keeping your landscaping free of weeds will give your plants the best chance to grow and will protect your overall investment in softscaping for your home.
Pest Control
Along with your landscape professionals checking for diseased plants, they will also check for evidence of pests. While most types of insects lie dormant in the winter and are harder to find, part of pest control is finding places that best accommodate pests. This includes haphazard piles of leaves that accumulated during the fall, or piles of brush. Preventing the pests and disease from propagating on the plants in your landscape will isolate the problem before it manifests in the spring, putting your entire landscape at risk. Check with landscape professionals about pest and disease control during the winter.
Prune, Prune, Prune!
Before the growing season starts, your plants are far easier to maintain for their greater health. By pruning your trees and shrubs, your landscape professionals give them new life. They will remove crowded branches or diseased areas that could limit growth or harm the entire tree or shrub. It’s essential to remove any dying limbs that could rot and make them more vulnerable to infestation and disease. Deciding how your tree or shrub grows is possible with pruning and it ensures their long-term health. Pruning is essential for getting your plant life ready for growing in the spring.
Lawn Care
While many plants go dormant in the winter, there are several species of grass that grow in New York State that continue to grow throughout the cold season. Even as snow hugs the ground and the temperatures dip low every night, sometimes you can still see some green poking through. While snow doesn’t cover the ground, it’s essential to come up with a plan for lawn care and fertilization with your landscape professional. This involves scheduling regular mowing and applying a slow-releasing fertilizer after the final mowing of the season. These steps shouldn’t be done by anyone but professionals, however, as the timing of mowing and fertilizing during this time has to be right to ensure it doesn’t damage the grass.
Related: Weed Control and 3 Other Reasons to Invest in Lawn Treatment in Wappingers Falls, NY