What a spring we have been having! One day it is warm and sunny, the birds are singing like crazy and your garden seems to call for you, then the clouds close in, and snowflakes are flying around in the wind.
By this time of year, city gardeners are fairly itching to get out there and get to work. But step away from the rake and the leaf bag. Just for a little longer.
Why Patience Matters
If you covered your beds last fall with mulch, leaf litter and other compost materials, it is still adding plenty of benefits to your garden, and you do not want to lift it too soon. Beneficial pollinators and other insects overwintering in the material will be lost if you consign them to the compost pile or leaf bag before they are ready to hatch. Many important species are bordering on endangered as it is.
You really should not expose your soil to the drying and compacting effects of wind and rain until temperatures are consistently above about 10 degrees Celsius, which depending on your growing zone is somewhere around the end of April.
Week 1: Gentle Start
When the sun is shining sweetly and it is shaping up to be a fine day to work outside, there are some things you can start doing now. Remove litter, broken branches, and other debris from your lawn and flowerbeds by hand. If you spot any weeds, it is relatively easy to get them now while they are still young and the ground is soft.
If your lawn still feels soft and spongy underfoot, do not walk on it any more than necessary. Any matted leaves that have ended up on the lawn can be lightly raked to prevent them smothering the grass underneath.
Shrubs and trees are fine to prune now, before they start growing in earnest. You can do this as needed all season long. Use a small hand rake or your fingers to gently move the mulch an inch or two back from emerging spring bulbs. Most bulbs are fine growing up straight through the mulch and can handle a late frost or even a spring snowstorm. It is easier to start the mulch removal process now when the bulbs are still just little spires.
Week 2 and 3: Main Cleanup
Do the main cleanup over at least a couple of weekends, simply because it is the most labour-intensive part of the job. Gently lift up last year's mulch and put it in the compost or leaf bags. Because many beds are very full of newly emerging perennials by this point, do this by hand or using a hand rake instead of a regular rake. Once perennials are starting to show new growth, trim and compost last year's dead growth as you go.
