5 Ways to Get Your Yard Ready for Spring

I love the month of May. The weather gets warmer, the days become longer and soon enough the temperature no longer freezes at night. We enjoy planting vegetables and cutting flowers in our garden. I also plant some herbs and colorful annuals in our planters. Here are 5 ways you can get your yard ready for spring.

Buy New Planting Soil

It’s helpful to refresh your garden soil every year, especially if it’s contained in planters. I like to scrape off the top layer of soil in my planters and mix in a generous amount of fresh planting soil. Old soil can be used as filler in a planter box or to level out a garden area. New planting soil often contains nutrients and fertilizer to help new plants grow! You can also add fertilizer and manure to existing planting soil to enrich it before planting your herbs and flowers.

Kids love to help with planting! I usually stock up on small gardening gloves and gardening tools. My kids enjoy helping to pick out seeds and flowers at the store. We bring home our supplies and get started with making our yard look pretty for spring!

Plant New Flowers After the Final Frost

Wait to plant new flowers until after the temperature no longer drops below freezing at night. This important tip will keep new plants from being damaged by frost. We live in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho in the Pacific Northwest. Our planting season starts later, towards the end of May, but our growing season lasts until mid-September. The flowers growing in our yard are very vibrant in June all the way to the end of summer, adding gorgeous color to our already amazing Coeur d’Alene lifestyle. Some blooms such as pansies can survive freezing temperatures, but many plants are best suited for warmer weather. Pansies seem to grow first and last the longest in the Pacific Northwest, adding a pop of color after other plants have faded away.

Give Flowers a Good Start with Fertilizer & Daily Water

Fertilizing is a great way to boost the growth of plants and flowers. After planting our annuals and herbs, I like to use the shake-on fertilizer that seeps into the soil over time. New plants should be watered right away. Vegetable seeds and wildflower seeds can be gently watered at the time of planting and every day after until they germinate and begin to sprout. I try to water our actively growing plants every few days during the warm days of spring. I typically set a timer for plants to be watered automatically in the early morning hours during the hot days of summer. If we are going to garden, I like to efficiently plan for minimum work to produce maximum results within our daily Coeur d’Alene lifestyle. You can easily give your plants a good start by mixing fertilizer into the soil and giving them daily water.

Planting is a memorable way to mark the end of chilly days and the start of spring! This year our family planted cutting flowers, carrots, snap peas and tomato plants in our garden. Our annuals that survive the winter and come back every year include our strawberry plants, raspberries and blueberry bushes.

Clean Up Last Year’s Pine Cones & Fallen Needles

Cleaning up pine cones and old pine needles is another important aspect of gardening and landscaping your yard. New growth will have trouble growing through a blanket of fallen pine needles. In early spring, we work to gently rake up the pine needles to refresh the garden beds and make them ready for planting. We also have lots of fallen pine cones, which we collect in buckets to use for bonfires; another fun activity within our Coeur d’Alene lifestyle in Idaho. Kids can help pick up pine cones too!

Refresh Your Landscaping With New Bark

A fresh layer of bark is a great way to spruce up your garden beds. If you haven’t done so, lay down a layer of ground cloth on the dirt to keep weeds at bay before covering your garden beds with bark. Last year, we laid ground cloth down around all of our main bushes and flowering plants. This made a huge difference in the amount of weeding we had to do to keep our yard looking nice. We also added new plants by cutting holes in the ground cloth. A subsequent layer of bark made our garden beds look clean and refreshed for the growing season!

It’s easy to get your yard ready for spring with a few simple tips. It’s fun to add color to the yard with a few planters or go as big as you’d like with a vegetable garden. Cleaning up last year’s pine cones and needles will go a long way towards making your yard look neat. And a fresh layer of ground cloth or bark will keep back weeds and make your colorful blooms stand out.

Katie Wallace

Hi, I’m Katie! I live with my husband and 4 kids in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. I love Jesus, coffee, creative projects, photography, and traveling. I’ve previously worked as a web designer, journalist, and barista. I hope you enjoy our creative projects and family adventures!