Garden Tips: With warm weather comes spring cleanup in the garden

Yea! With the arrival of spring it is time to get outside and start gardening. While our last average date of spring frost is in early May, there are plenty of things that need to be done in the garden right now.

Clean Up: One of the first chores on the early spring to-do list is garden cleanup. Many perennials have already started growing beneath the dead leaves and stems of last year’s growth. Remove all this detritus so the new growth can get light and air. Rake up any leaves that have fallen or blown in over the winter. If these are left on the lawn, they can mat down and kill the grass.

Weeding: Winter weeds have taken advantage of our mild winter to get a good start on the season. Looking around, you are likely to find numerous annual and perennial weeds already green and growing in the lawn and garden. Weeds like cheatgrass, dandelion, marestail, horseweed, chickweed, prickly lettuce, and different kinds of mustard all like to get an early start. Where practical, pull or dig up these seedling weeds before they grow larger, flower, and set seed.

Cut Back Ornamental Grasses: Most gardeners leave the tops of ornamental grasses in place during the winter for adding visual interest to the winter landscape and providing protection from cold temperatures to the crown and roots. By early spring ornamental grasses look pretty tattered. Cut the dry, brown tops of ornamental grasses back to a height of 4-6 inches. Doing this in early spring exposes the crown to the warmth of the sun and encourages new growth a couple of weeks sooner. Semi-evergreen grasses, such as blue fescue, do not usually turn totally brown during winter. These grasses should have the dead grass “combed” or teased out with gloved hands.

If any of your ornamental grass plants have dead centers, it means that they should be divided. Spring is a good time for this difficult and laborious task. Check a reference on ornamental grasses for the best ways to divide these clumps or go to: https://www.unce.unr.edu/publications/files/ho/2006/fs0683.pdf

Roses: When the yellow flowering shrub Forsythia is in bloom, it is time to prune your roses. First work on removing any dead, broken or obviously diseased canes (those with blackened cankers). Also, get rid of any canes or suckers that come from below the graft.

Next prune out any weak or spindly canes that are less than a pencil in diameter. Your goal is to leave healthy thick canes that will be the most productive. If your goal is big blooms on hybrid tea, grandiflora, floribunda or miniature roses, leave only 3 to 5 of the thickest canes evenly spaced around the plant. Prune these canes back to an outward facing bud that is at a height of approximately 18 inches. You can leave more than the 3 to 5 canes, but the flowers will be smaller and the shrub more crowded.

Landscape roses, such as the Carefree, Knockout and Oso Easy Proven Winners series, are considered easy-care roses and do not require pruning other than shaping. I have an Oso Easy rose that has become taller than I had planned. This spring I want to cut it back to half its current height and width to keep it from overtaking nearby plants.

Doesn’t it feel good to get outside and get our hands busy in the garden? Just do not forget to wear your garden gloves for protection.

This story was originally published March 24, 2018 at 1:47 PM with the headline "Garden Tips: With warm weather comes spring cleanup in the garden."