Spring Cleanup/Landscaping Tips

No matter which landscaping services you utilize, a good spring cleanup can boost the health of your lawn throughout the season. Cleaning the yard after a harsh winter is the most effective thing you can do to keep your rental properties in good condition for the rest of the year and maintain curb appeal. Landscaping companies offer a huge variety of lawn care services, but some may not be necessary for your rental properties.

Before reaching out to a landscaping company, make sure you know what yard care services your properties will actually need. Region-specific services will differ across markets, but the essentials are the same across the board. Every spring cleanup should include the following.

Debris removal 

Why You Should Do It:

• Leaves, branches, and other debris from the winter can be harmful to your lawn’s health. Although organic debris can act as a natural fertilizer, excessive debris can block sunlight and nutrients from being absorbed by your lawn. This kind of blockage creates brown or dead spots in your lawn.
• Excessive debris is also a breeding ground for mold and attracts unwanted pests. 

Rather than trying to rehabilitate your lawn during the summer months, you should remove excessive debris from each rental property and prevent these problems before they happen. This is an easy task and can be done by you, your tenants, or TaskEasy’s team of professionals tending to other yard maintenance. Failure to remove organic debris will damage your lawn and decrease your curb appeal and property value over time.

Tree Pruning/Trimming

Why You Should Do It:

• Trimming branches is essential to the health of your trees. Any dead, diseased, or damaged branches put your trees at risk of harmful bugs taking over. Removing them immediately prevents infestations and diseases from spreading. 
• Proper pruning can literally shape the way your trees grow. If you notice that your trees are leaning a certain way (say, toward the house), you can prune them in a way that allows them to grow straight up or even away from your home. This mitigates the risk of trees growing up against your home or falling through a window during a storm. 

Regular pruning helps your trees live longer, protects your home, and stimulates healthy vegetation growth on your properties. Tree pruning is recommended once a year during the dormant season. Late fall or early spring are the best times to prune; however, pruning in the spring will take care of any damage caused by a harsh winter.

Flower Bed Maintenance

Why You Should Do It:

• Surrounding your flowers with mulch is an easy and aesthetic way to retain moisture, add nutrients over time, and protect their roots from extreme temperatures.
• Weeding flower beds needs to be done frequently, but starting with a fresh flower bed at the beginning of spring will allow for easier maintenance throughout the year.
• Turning over the dirt in your flower beds is an easy way to keep your soil fresh and create a better environment for planting flowers or removing weeds.
• Remove or replace any dead plants and prune the ones that survived to avoid eyesores and keep your flower beds tidy.

The main function of a flower bed is to increase the curb appeal of your rental properties. A lot of people enjoy gardening, so you may leave the flower beds empty for those tenants who want to plant things themselves. If that’s not the case, you will want to make sure they are regularly maintained.

Fertilization and Overseeding

Why You Should Do It:

• Grass lawns often lack nutrients, especially after a winter of being dormant. Lawns should be fertilized 4-6 times per year depending on the climate.
• Overseeding is necessary for dirt patches or dead spots in your lawn. It is simply planting new seeds to thicken existing grass and repair damaged areas.

These lawn care services are applied using the same technique, so it’s easy to create a mixture and apply both in one visit. This duo plants new grass in dead areas and accelerates healthy growth with fertilizer. This is one of the more simple landscaping services that can make a fast, visible difference. Thick, green, and healthy grass are all promoted by fertilization and overseeding. This can also help prevent dead patches in the highly trafficked areas of your rental properties.

Dethatching

Dethatching is removing the layer of dead grass of a lawn that has accumulated over the winter so that the healthy layer underneath can receive proper sunlight, water, nutrients, and oxygen.. This can be done with a regular garden rake but is more efficient with a power rake. 

Some people opt for lawn aeration, as it serves a similar purpose, but dethatching makes more sense for single-family rental properties. Aeration is typically meant to prevent or reverse soil compaction. However, soil compaction is only common in clay soils or high-traffic areas, like parks or school campuses.

There are different levels of lawn care that owners and property managers feel comfortable investing in their properties. Great curb appeal is critical in trying to find a decent renter, which means you’ll need an annual yard spring cleanup service. These lawn care services are considered preventative and will help you stay focused on the more profitable parts of property management. Regularly maintained properties will help you avoid expensive deferred landscape maintenance, keep your rental properties looking great year-round, and keep your tenants happy.

Get a quote from TaskEasy and see how our expert contractors can make caring for your rental properties easier and more convenient than ever.