Prepare Your Lawn and Garden

High winds have cluttered lawns and gardens with branches and debris. Rake thoroughly to remove anything that might be propelled into the air by a fast-spinning lawnmower blade. Don’t add yourself, your pets or your windows to the statistics of lawnmower injuries.
    While you have the lawnmower in operation, raise its deck to four inches and push it through the flower garden. This is a great way of pruning the top of the perennials and annuals and pulverizing them into mulch. This natural mulch will not suffocate the roots. Leave the stems of annuals in place to help maintain the mulch. Both stems and roots of annuals will contribute organic matter to the soil.
    This is a great time of year to prune the buddleia to the ground. Don’t be afraid. Butterfly bush is nearly impossible to kill. I have seen it grow in thatch roof on houses in England.
    Spring is also time to divide perennials that are becoming crowded. I like using a Japanese gardeners’ knife or a hatchet with a hammer to divide perennials with crowns that are difficult to pull apart by hand. Use the knife or hatchet to divide the top of the crowns down to the roots, then pull the roots apart. This method helps you recover a greater portion of the roots. If you are dividing a large clump, discard the center portion, which is generally the oldest and the most susceptible to rot.
    Clumps of ornamental grasses also need dividing. The center of large ornamental grasses tends to die out, resulting in a donut appearance. Before digging the clump, use your power hedge clipper to prune back the top. You can make the top into mulch by cutting the stems into four- to six-inch lengths and letting them lie. Cut the stems as close to the ground as possible, and don’t worry about cutting a few new green shoots.
    Root-prune the clump close to the outer edge by sticking the blade of a sharp shovel perpendicular to the ground and pushing until its top is flush with the ground. Repeat this step around the entire clump. Dig a ditch around one-half the circumference of the clump before trying to wedge the root ball from the opposite side of the ditch. With the root-ball above ground, use an ax and a sledgehammer to divide the clump into smaller clumps four to six inches in diameter, saving only those divisions along the outer edge. Discard all crowns close to the center of the clump. These are the oldest crowns and prone to rot.
    If you are a friend of the Bay, want to save money and desire the best lawn and garden ever, have your soil tested. If you have been fertilizing your lawn and garden year after year and/or have not applied lime, there is a good possibility that you could have problems. Excess levels of phosphorus in the soil cause nutritional problems. Your soil may be too acid to grow plants efficiently. Or the organic matter in your garden soil could be too low.
    Only a soil test will give you the information to correct the problem and help you become a better gardener. Go to www.al-labs-eastern.com and follow the instructions. If you would like the Bay Gardener to review the test results, include my name and email, [email protected], and they will send me your results.
    Do not include a crop on your form, which will save you a few dollars. But I will need to know what you are growing to make the proper recommendations, so e-mail me crop information separately. I do not charge Bay Weekly readers for my recommendations.