A Spring and Fall Clean Up Checklist for Yakima Valley Yards

A yard has two real deadlines a year. One comes when the leaves drop and the nights turn cold. The other comes when the ground thaws and everything wakes up at once. Miss either one and you spend the summer fixing what a few hours of work would have prevented. Here's how we'd think about each, for yards in the valley.

Fall: get ahead of the leaves and the freeze

Fall clean up isn't about tidiness, though it helps. It's about what a layer of wet leaves does to a lawn over the winter. Leaves left in place mat down under snow, block light, hold moisture against the grass, and invite disease. By spring you've got dead patches in the exact shape of the pile.

Wait until most of the leaves are down before you start. Clearing early means doing it twice. When the trees are mostly bare, a backpack blower and a rake clear lawns and beds fast, and the leaves can be hauled off or composted. A mulching mower pass can also shred a light layer of leaves into the lawn, which works if the layer is thin.

Here's a fall checklist that covers the usual ground.

• Rake or blow leaves off the lawn and out of the beds.
• Cut back perennials that have died down, and pull out spent annuals.
• Trim shrubs that need shaping, but go easy on anything that flowers on old wood.
• Clean the gutters after the leaves have dropped, not before.
• Mow the lawn one last time, a little shorter than summer height.
• Schedule your sprinkler blowout before the hard freeze.

Gutters get their own mention

A gutter full of leaves holds water, and water that freezes in a gutter can pull it away from the fascia or send ice dams back under the roofline. Clean them once the trees are done, and look at where the downspouts end. Water dumped right at the foundation helps nobody. Gutter cleaning is one of the services First Choice Lawn Care lists for residential customers, and it's the one most people put off until they see a waterfall coming off the roof.

Spring: wait for the ground, then move fast

The temptation on the first warm day is to rake hard. Resist it for a little while. Wet, thawing ground tears up easily, and walking on soggy lawn compacts it. Wait until the surface firms up, then start.

Spring is when beds get their attention. Clear out the dead stems and the leaves that settled in over the winter, pull the early weeds while they're small, and put down fresh mulch or check that your rock beds are still edged cleanly. Mary Ebbers, a customer, wrote that First Choice did "exceptional work on spring clean up, flower bed cleaning bush shaping and rose bush trimming." That's the whole list, and it's a good one.

Roses and shrubs: what to cut and when

Roses generally get their main pruning in late winter or early spring, as the buds begin to swell. You're taking out dead wood, crossing canes, and anything that looks thin and weak, then opening up the middle for air. Cutting too early invites winter damage on new growth. Cutting too late means you remove buds that were about to bloom.

Shrubs vary by type. Spring bloomers, like lilacs, form buds the previous year, so a hard cut in spring costs you flowers. Prune those right after they bloom. Summer bloomers are more forgiving of an early-season cut. When you don't know what you've got, a light shaping is safer than a hard cut.

If you have acreage

Larger properties have their own problems. Susan Barnum wrote that her "3 acres was a horrible mess, because of tumble weeds." Anyone who lives out past the edge of town in this valley knows the picture. Tumbleweeds break loose, roll with the wind, and pile against fences and buildings. They're a pain to pick up by hand, and a pile left in place just seeds the next generation.

On acreage, clean up usually means a crew with the right equipment, a trailer to haul the debris, and a plan to keep the pile from coming back. Susan wrote that the owner "gave us a very reasonable estimate" and that, when it was done, "you would never know it was a mess."

Putting it on your calendar

First Choice Lawn Care Services runs spring and fall clean ups, gutter cleaning, shrub trimming, and haul-away across the Yakima Valley, from Yakima County to Kittitas County. If you'd like a crew to take the list off your hands, call (509) 699-3071 for a free estimate, Monday through Saturday.