When Should You Clean Your Garden?

A garden is a place of relaxation and can help you relax your mind. It can relieve stress and fatigue. It is, therefore, important to ensure your garden is in a clean and healthy state always.

So, when should you clean your garden? The best time to clean up your garden is in the spring. Dead plants, leaves, and stems littering your garden is not a pleasant sight and it is also not a healthy state for your garden.

Dead plants can harbor fungus and diseases that would affect your plantings in other seasons. Spring Garden cleanup provides a clean slate for your vegetables and perennials to grow.

When Is It Appropriate To Clean Up Your Garden?

It is always advisable to clean up your garden in spring. Dead plants usually hide diseases and weeds which can spread quickly and infest your whole garden. Spring garden cleanup would help keep your gardens free from diseases and weeds.

It’s a good idea to wait until the ground has dried up a bit and thawed before you begin your spring garden cleaning. If you start your spring garden cleaning when the ground is still wet, it could result in soil compaction which would make it quite difficult for plants and crops to grow later on.

Cleaning up your garden can be a major task, especially if you have a lot of garden beds. You don’t have to do it all in a single day, you can clean it at your own pace all through the spring.

Here are the necessary things you need to do to ensure your garden is in a clean state and free from diseases and weeds.

12 Things To Do When Cleaning Your Graden

1. Prune shrubs

Pruning is usually the first activity involved in cleaning your garden. The best time for doing it is early in spring. It helps to trigger new growth and prevents the spread of diseases. However, do not prune blooming shrubs, wait till they are done blooming before you prune them.

2. Remove mulches as well as other protection

As soon as the temperature begins to warm up in the spring, you can then remove any mulch or protection you might have added to protect your sensitive plants during fall.

3. Level up thick leaves

Leaves are very good for your garden so you don’t need to remove all the leaves from your garden. Leaves act as an additional layer of mulch to help in keeping the weeds down and also to feed the soil as they loosen. However, ensure you level down the thick layers of leaves.

4. Pull up dead annuals

Annual plants, like begonias, petunias, marigolds, snapdragons, and geraniums only live for a year in harsh weather conditions and do not grow back after winter.

So, there is no point in keeping them in your garden after winter. You should pull them out of the ground from their roots and dispose of them.

5. Pull up dead growth from perennials

Prune or remove the dead growth from perennials like daylilies, hostas, ornamental grasses, sedums, and coneflowers. Remove thick layers of leaves so they would not slow new growths.

Also, be very careful when pruning plants so you would not mistakenly cut off new growth. Do not force out dead plants and stems out of the ground. If it is proving too difficult to remove, consider pruning it instead.

6. Clean the vegetable garden

Remove all dead vegetable plants. As much as possible, remove all plant debris and roots as you clean up the vegetable garden. Also, detangle all dead vines from trellises.

7. Pull out weeds

The best time to pull out weeds before they become established is in the spring. Weeds are much easier to sight in the spring before the perennial plants start growing.

Also, since the soil is wet in the spring, it makes it easy to quickly pull out weeds. After you are done pulling out the weeds, cover the ground with thick layers of mulches to prevent new ones from growing.

8. Edge the garden beds to remove grass

Grass has a way of creeping into your garden beds. Spring is the best time to remove these grasses that have found their way into your garden beds because they are easier to see to sight then and also to pull out since the soil is still wet.

9. Clean up the lawn

Aside from cleaning up your garden, you should also clean up the lawn. Remove dead leaves, pick up branches and stems, and remove plant debris. This activity should be done when the ground is dried up a bit and thawed.

10. Prune trees

In addition to cleaning up your garden, spring is also the best time to prune some of the trees in your yard. However, pruning fruit or flowering trees should not be done until after they are done blooming.

11. Clean your patio furniture

Give your patio furniture a quick rinse or wash with soapy water to ensure it is dirt-free and fit to accommodate guests at any time.

12. Sweep the patio, deck, and porch

A lot of dirt and debris accumulate on the patios, decks, and porches during winter. So, the spring is usually the best time to sweep any dirt that has accumulated through the winter.

What Tools Do I Need To Clean Up My Garden?

Garden cleanup can be a bit overwhelming but with the right tools in place, cleaning would be much easier. Here are a few of the tools that you need to have to make your garden cleanup much easier for you.

Heavy-duty hand pruners

These heavy-duty hand pruners are different from the regular hand pruners. They are specially designed to make the task of cutting through thick branches and stems effortlessly.

Loppers for thick stems and branches

Loopers also make it super easy to cut through thick branches and stems just as with scissors and paper.

Hand rake

This is a handy tool that is useful for raking leaves out from around plants. A hand rake comes in handy when you are not wearing gloves or when you are cleaning up prickly plants like barberry bushes or roses.

Billhook saw

This tool is particularly useful for cutting down thick perennials. It is also multipurpose as you can use the other end to easily dig into the soil to uproot grasses and weeds.

How Can I Keep My Garden Clean?

According to available ideas, major garden cleanliness problems are water drainage clogging, fallen leaves and branches, overgrowing lawn grass and weeds, and diseases and fungus infestation. Here are a few tips to keep your garden clean and healthy at all times.

Ensure you examine plants thoroughly before buying them. Choose a healthy plant to prevent disease infestation into your garden.
Ensure manure is completely decomposed before you use it.
Watch out for bugs that can attract bacteria and viruses.
Clean your garden regularly.
Remove dry leaves and dead plants to avoid diseases and fungus breeding over them.
Prune damaged branches and stem as soon as you spot them.