When can I do Spring Gardening tasks?

I've been getting a lot of questions lately on the timing of spring gardening tasks. In this episode we talk through the timing on spring gardening tasks and how you want to accomplish them.

Download the Seasons Calendar at MinnesotaGardening.com for a list of gardening tasks and when to do them.

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Transcript

 Hello and welcome my friend to the Minnesota Gardening Podcast. It is my honor to have you here with me. My name is Brad Tabke, and I'm the host of the Minnesota Gardening Podcast, where we work to help homeowners feed pollinators, eliminate chemicals, save water, and store carbon in their home landscape.

I've been getting a ton of questions about when can we start with spring cleanup and when can we do things in the landscape because of making sure to protect insects and not doing things too early, and now is the time, my friend, now is the time to get moving.

There's a lot of different things out there that are rules about when you should be going, when you should not be going, to tell you the truth, there are always trade-offs. There are trade-offs with doing any sort of cleanup whatsoever. And so you need to decide in your landscape what is the thing that works for you.

And what I wanna talk today about is some spring cleanup. Trade-offs and different things that you need to be thinking about and recognizing as you are working through how you want to handle your home landscape. And so when we talk about those trade-offs, we talk about things that are, 100% natural.

So we've got a spectrum, right? We've got a range of ways where we can do our work in the home landscape. And anything in your landscape and your lawn care and your food gardening has that range. And so you can go 100% natural and just let nature be nature and do its thing in your landscape and not worry about a thing.

Or you can go to the opposite end of the spectrum where it's a very commercialized, petroleum based lawn care and landscape and, doing everything in a very suburban sort of way of looking at, how our landscapes should work.

And I think we need to develop a new paradigm and a new way of looking at things and making sure that we understand that there is a balance that everyone can and should strike in how they handle their landscape. And so here at Minnesota gardening and the way my personal feelings and opinions go is that we emulate nature as much.

As possible. We have, pollinators, we have trees, we have perennials, we have grasses, we have insects, we have songbirds. We have all of those friends that we know are necessary to maintaining our local ecosystem and how that works for everyone. We know that those have over millennia evolved together, and they have evolved without the help of chemicals.

They've evolved without the help of, humans in general. There are obviously some really important, caveats to that. Like prairie, it's really important that native, Americans have burned the prairies in the United States. And so that was a really important way for regenerating and, and adding nutrients to the ground.

And so those are. Some big caveats to what I'm talking about here, but in general, we are part of nature and we should make sure that we are working as closely to nature as we possibly can in our home landscape. And what does that mean? So in the terms of spring cleanup, if you were going 100% on the spectrum toward, full nature, you just leave everything.

You don't wanna worry about anything, you just wanna let it go. Um. And there are absolute positives to that. And so we have a series of native bees in Minnesota and a lot of different insects that are stem boring insects. So they live in the hollow stems from the past years. There's some really cool studies that have been done about, all the insects in, the upper Midwest that follow deer around and wait for deer to browse and eat something. And then they follow that, plant from where the deer has eaten and they, lay eggs and put some food in that stem and then seal it off for their larvae to eat. And so they know how to do this.

What we, advocate here at Minnesota Gardening is that type of method, so like a chop and drop type method. So leaving some stems, leaving things up. So we tell people to Minnesota, gardening members to cut about halfway. cut about halfway on your perennials and grasses this time of year so that they still have those sturdy stems that, insects can lay eggs in and utilize those and have, folks come.

live in there. But then also you have those plants that grow up through it. So we're talking mostly about perennials and grasses here and how that works. And so you wanna make sure to use this method and leave the tops behind. in your home landscape, there can also be a spectrum of how you maintain things.

If there are areas by your front door or by your driveway That you want to have be tidy. You can absolutely make those tidier. You can cut those back more. You can remove the debris and put it somewhere else within your landscape. You can absolutely do those kinds of things. or you can chop those back halfway or you can leave them fully up.

It's up to you as to how you want to do it, but we advocate a chop and drop type method, so making sure to, cut those about halfway down, those plants so that you have done something and people can tell that You're working to keep it tidy, but you have an intent. you have established intent.

You are working to make sure that people know what's going on in your landscape and, then put those stems somewhere in your landscape. So if you don't wanna leave them right, by your front door, you can put 'em to your backyard and put 'em in, a landscape that you have back there. And so you're moving those around, but still keeping 'em within your local ecosystem.

This is the time of year and so what, there are always very different, Timings for when, insects are emerging and what's happening, and so you kind of just have to do what is best for you in that as well. And so some folks like to wait until May, June before they do any sort of cleanup type activities.

Others like to do it earlier. I think that right now is a really good time. Once the weather starts to be consistently warmer, once we start to see, changes in our landscape, when the leaves are starting to butt out and we have plants that are starting to grow, this is the right time, in my opinion, to do this kind of thing.

As long as the ground is firm and you're able to walk on it without damaging things. So that is, covering some timing. And so now we just wanna go through some other landscape, spring cleanup type items, that you can find. We have a seasons calendar if you go to Minnesota gardening.com. Minnesota gardening members get it as part of their membership.

you can also download it for just $7. So that's there for everyone@minnesotagardening.com. in the landscape. what I do. Is very minimal for cleanup activities both fall and spring. in spring I just clean up debris and make sure that, any garbages outta the landscape.

But I leave most everything else and then I chop and drop all of the perennials and grasses. cut those back about halfway, let the new growth of this year grow up and through those old dead stems. you can have stems that are two, three years old depending on what the plant is.

And just let it be and let those be there for, housing our new friends and, making sure that everyone stays happy and healthy through there. So using a chop and drop method is a really great way of protecting insects and pollinators and, having, More larvae and caterpillars and things for songbirds and making sure that we're taking care of everybody in our local ecosystem.

So that's basically all I do for spring cleanup. I leave all of my leaves where they're at. I drop the, overwintered, stems and leaves, in the landscape beds and let them be there. And then if I need to, I add some compost to the soil. So if I have some places that look like they're struggling, I add some compost just on the top, top dress with that compost and let the nutrients flow through.

in the fall, again, we left all of the leaves in place, and so those are all breaking down over the winter and spring and giving us a good mulch. So make sure to leave those leaves to do the work for you. So another thing that I like to do in the spring is edge my bed.

So I like to use a spade edging, where you just go through and vertically cut a line between the lawn area and the landscape area. over time my lawn area has been decreasing. So that, is decreasing the amount of bed edging I do, which is very nice 'cause it's pretty labor intensive. just go through and cut with an edge with a spade, the edge, vertically along your, bed edge and then pull out that grass, that little area.

And toss that in your compost so that that is there and it's not giving you, a bunch of weeds growing in places. So I like to edge my beds mulching as well. I have really pulled back. I used to put down 10, 15 yards of mulch, every couple years in my landscape. And I just don't do that anymore because I've planted so many perennials and native.

Plants that, they fill up that area. I let leaves do a lot of the work on mulching and so I don't mulch nearly as much as I used to. It's mostly just tree rings now and some walkways and that kind of thing. tree wrap. Make sure to remove that tree wrap from your fruit trees so that they are able to breathe and not harbor a lot of moisture up against the trunk of those trees.

get a ton of questions about lilacs as well, so we don't prune lilacs until after they're done blooming. This year is gonna be weird. We don't really know exactly what's gonna happen. When we had that fall, bloom of our lilacs here in the upper Midwest, because of the crazy climate that we've got going on, a lot of stresses on those plants.

A lot of them bloomed in the fall, with kind of smaller, weak blooms. But we don't know if they are going to. Bloom like normal this year or what's gonna happen. So we highly advocate, pruning lilacs after they're done blooming. And with that, you wanna remove about a third using the, winter pruning type methods for, but doing it after they're done blooming so that you remove a third of the biggest canes in that plant.

And so you wanna remove the big guys and let over the summer, let them regrow into those areas. right now is also a really great time for dividing plants. if you have, plants that are clump type plants and you want to spread them out and share them some other places in your landscape or with friends, go ahead and do that now.

Right now is one of the best times for doing that. You know where that plant is coming up and, you can start to see that growth happen. You wanna remove, you wanna pull out that plant and then chop it into three or four different pieces and it's a really easy process to do and you get a lot more plants, 

Usually at least three or four years old before you wanna start dividing plants. And so those are there. also it is a little early, for planting any sort of spring annuals except for things that are really cold, hardy, like pansies and snapdragons. We're still gonna get some frost. Yet. And so we are recording this, the end of April.

And so we've got another three weeks before we are solidly out of the final frost date here in the upper Midwest. And so it is, an important thing to make sure you're protecting everything and only planning what is necessary at this point so you don't waste a lot of things. and we'll get to food gardening kinds of things in just a little bit here.

So that is our spring landscape, activities that we do. And now, we'll talk about lawn care a little bit. this is also a spectrum of what you want to have for your sustainable lawn care practices. You can have the, fit fairway or center field type thing where your grass is perfect and perfectly level, no weeds, no nothing.

it's, just a, site to behold. But that is. Really, really expensive to do. It uses a ton of chemicals, it uses a ton of water, and it is really bad for our environment, so we don't like to do that. So we want to stay as close to natural as we possibly can. So highly advocate, weeds are okay. Bee lawns are highly preferable using clover and, pussy toes and yaro and other kinds of things in your lawn, and right now is a great time to be adding those to your lawn.

So spring is a wonderful time For overs seeding. So, visit our friends at Twin City Seed and grab some Belaw mixes. I think they've got some really good sales going on right now as well. And so, add some, bee lawn friends to your lawn, so that will help disguise the weeds, help you eliminate chemicals, and not use those on, your landscape Mowing as high as necessary. There is absolutely zero reason to be turning your irrigation on at this point. You can have it started up, but we've had plenty of rain, so there's no reason to have your irrigation running.

so don't waste water that way and run that irrigation system whenever you need it. right now you wanna water infrequently on your lawns if it needs it, because what happens is that forces those, Turf plants to dig deep and go deeper to find water. And so that will help them survive once it gets hot and windy this summer.

you wanna make sure not to be, irrigating right now. You wanna let those plants grow deep roots and not force them to keep really shallow roots, which is what happens when you have the irrigation turned on this early in the season. Two more things on, sustainable lawn care. One is power raking is just not necessary.

It removes nutrients and it damage the plants. it can look better, it can look greener, just because it doesn't have that dead material, over winter material in it. But it also removes a ton of nutrients. And, doesn't allow, that grass to decompose and add those nutrients back into the soil.

So we do not want to do power raking, detaching, anything like that. It's just not a necessary practice here. and so, then the next one is chemical side of things. And so, weed control is. It's really bad to use chemicals. Do not, do not, do not use weed and feeds. Try not to use any sort of pre-emergent crab grass.

If you've got, a healthy grass system, crab grass won't be a problem for you. And you can also stop caring about it as well. That's a whole different level of things. do not use chemicals unless you absolutely have to in your landscape. fertilization right now, if you wanna have a healthy turf where you can play on it and do things, you need to make sure to be maintaining it because turf grass doesn't do well without nitrogen.

And so what we highly recommend is a little bit of nitrogen in the fall. If you want to take things up a notch, you can do a little bit of nitrogen in the spring as well for your landscape to help get everything up and running in your, turf areas. And so we recommend a quarter pound of, organic fertilizer per thousand square feet.

Make sure it's organic fertilizer. The other fertilizers, are petroleum based fertilizers, and we don't need to be. supporting that industry. So go for organic fertilizer, wherever you can. So, last thing we're gonna talk about with Spring today on this episode of Minnesota Gardening Podcast.

Again, this is all in the seasons calendar. You can download it. if you're a Minnesota Gardening member, if you just go to the seasons calendar tab@minnesotagardening.com, or you can grab it for seven dollars@minnesotagardening.com as well. Food, gardening side of things, you are cleared and okay to go for cool season type, vegetables and flour.

So again, I said pansies and snapdragons. They do well with a freeze. They do, good job of sticking around for us. Then the next kinds of things are things like. Brassica family. So cauliflowers, broccoli, le cabbage, kale, Brussels sprouts, those kinds of things are totally great to plant this time of year.

They will make it, they will be great. and so you can get them, they'll survive a freeze and it actually helps 'em out a little bit so you can go ahead and, plant those guys. A lot of, seeds can also be planted now before the. Final frost of the season. So you can get beans going. Just check your seed packet and say, if it says, like two weeks before frost those are all good to plant a lot of flowers, marigolds are okay to plant.

Now things that you do wanna wait on until the soil warms up. 'cause the soil bean warm is really important, are all of those warm season type plants. And so you've got, tomatoes. Peppers, eggplants, those kinds of friends who really need to have some heat in order to, get growing. 

Wait on those for at least another three weeks before we have ground temperatures that get, nice and warm and we're consistently above 50 degrees in temperature type things. So we've got that. do not, again, use chemicals in your landscape as much, any food garden as much as you can. avoid that pre-emergence, like are really, really damaging and they're, proving, pre-emergence themselves and a lot of those chemicals are proving to be extremely carcinogenic. And so we don't want to have those in our, especially our food gardens as much as we can avoid it. But you are cleared to go on all of those cool season plants. And so that's kind of, I wanted to walk through timing of things and where we're at on activities and being able to get things done in our landscape and our lawn care and our food gardening.

And I'm just super proud and excited for everybody. If you, want to see a lot of things that are going on at Minnesota Gardening, just head to Minnesota gardening.com. We've got a lot of cool programs going on and in May we are starting a landscape challenge. So we are gonna go week by week for developing a landscape plan and native plant plan and getting that done so you can get your.

Babies started and get a spring native plant, remove some lawn, and get a spring native plant garden going. So that is coming up in May at Minnesota Gardening. So I am super glad to have you here with us today. If you have any questions or need anything, just shoot me a text, Brad at Minnesota. email brad@minnesotagardening.com and always happy to help.

So with that, have a wonderful, wonderful day and make sure to check us out at minnesotagardening.com. Thanks.