As this short video shows it is not too late for garden clean up in your spring gardening and garden maintenance. You can still do pruning if you didn’t get it done last fall. In fact some spring pruning is often better than doing it in fall, since the excess wood may protect the shrub through the winter.
In the spring you would look for winter damage and dead wood first before doing additional pruning. Clean that out and then go on to prune your shrub as needed. Different shrubs may have different pruning needs, so check out what your shrub needs. For instance, shrubs like forsythia bloom in early spring, so wait with that one. In general, though, you will want to also prune out crossing branches that can abrade one another.
For perennials, prune out last years growth, and dig out any perennials that didn’t survive the winter.
You can also rake up any leaves or yard debris that has accumulated and get your garden ready for spring. Add some slow release fertilizer to the planting beds in your garden and get ready for the spring flowers.
I am trying something slightly different here than this. I have left a lot of the tree leaves on the ground and added compost with some fertilizer to make some nice mulch. Mulch helps with water retention, but doing what I am doing does increase the number of slugs – yuk. So think about how aggressive you want to be with slug patrol before doing this.
Home Garden Diggers 