What is a spring clean-up?
A spring clean can be defined as whatever needs to be done to get the property ready (preventing disease and damage) and looking aesthetically pleasing for the summer months.
These services might be included:
- Remove leaves, twigs, branches, and debris from the lawn.
- Aerate, overseed, de-thatching, and or lawn rolling of grass areas.
- Remove leaves, twigs, branches, debris, and or fungi mulch from mulch beds.
- Prune and shape any non-flowering bushes and shrubbery.
- Edge mulch beds.
- Apply preen.
- Install new mulch
- Startup sprinkler systems
- Turn water on to outside faucets.
Although this is a wide range of services that can be complete in the spring, all services are not necessary but will make a dramatic improvement to your property’s curb appeal.
I will be focusing on the benefits of removing leaves, twigs, branches, and debris from the lawn in this blog, but if you return to syracuselawn.com “lawn care tips,” you will find blogs about the other services listed above.
Spring clean-up – Removal of leaves, twigs, branches, and debris from the property will benefit a property in the following ways:
• Leaves left on the property prevents sunlight from reaching the turf causing it to die.
Some say sunshine is the best medicine for your lawn. It is fairly common knowledge that plants need sunlight to survive. Sunlight nurtures your turf through photosynthesis. During this process, chloroplast cells in the plants absorb the sun’s energy, which is then converted into food.
- Accumulated leaves are a good place for rodents and insects to take residence, causing damage to lawn and home.
- Some of these insects and rodents might include Ticks, spiders, millipedes, centipedes, snakes, and mice.
- Excessive leaves left down may harbor fungal disease
- The most common disease in the northeast is snow mold and brown patch
- Removing debris is appealing to the eye and improves curb appeal.
Removing leaves from the property does improve the curb appeal of your property.
When the focus is on lawn health, you do not have to rake up every last fallen leaf, but the majority should be removed from your lawn. If you do not care about a few stray leaves and want to keep your grass healthy, then rest assured a few leftover leaves can’t hurt your lawn.
