Down the Garden Path: The Dos and Don’ts of early spring lawn and garden care

With a few nice, warm days to entice us, many are itching to start working in their lawns and gardens. But don’t – Mother Nature is trying to fool us – it’s too early in the season. On a recent 70-degree day, a friend told me she tried to rake over her garden only to find the soil still completely frozen. With that in mind, here are a few dos and don’ts for early spring gardening:

• Don’t walk through your beds more than necessary. This risks that the soil, wet from spring rains, will become compacted. This reduces space and air in the soil around your plants, including your trees and shrubs, making it more difficult for them to take up nutrients and thrive once the growing season is here. Be careful not to step on or trample newly emerging flowers such as daylilies, tulips, hyacinths and daffodils.
• Don’t try to plant seeds or plants just yet, no matter how nice it is outside. The soil temperature is key and can easily be measured with a soil thermometer. You can also check the University of Illinois’s Water and Atmospheric Resources Monitoring Program for a monitoring site near you. You may need to create a login, but it’s free and contains great information for gardeners. The soil temperature (different from the air temperature) should be at least 50 degrees for planting the seeds of cool-season crops such as beets, carrots, spinach, lettuce, kale, peas, turnips, parsley and Swiss chard, among others. Other cool-season vegetables, such as broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage, will do better grown from transplants. Potatoes can also be planted around mid-to-late April.
• Don’t fertilize your lawn too early. Not only will you compact the soil (see the first point), but the fertilizer will run off during the spring rains, polluting our lakes and rivers and adding zero benefit to your yard.
• Don’t remove leaf cover and standing vegetation if you’ve left some for the pollinators! Most have not emerged yet and when they do, they’ll be looking for last year’s stems to lay their own eggs in. Feel free to “fluff” any leaves you’ve left that have become matted over winter.
• Do get your lawnmower ready now. Service the engine, clean the deck, and have your mower blade sharpened. A sharp blade provides a clean cut and prevents tearing of the grass. Tearing creates a brown cast to your lawn and can allow disease to infect the grass.
• Do check out the catalogs or webpages of your favorite seed and plant suppliers and get dreaming! The catalogs/webpages are chock full of information on plant sizes, bloom times, soil moisture & light requirements, etc.
• Do make plans for what you want to grow this year. Are you going to add a bed of native plants? Start a rain garden? Plant an oak tree? Grow your own vegetables? Draw up some rough plans (it doesn’t have to be fancy), choose the perfect spots and plants for your landscape and garden, and order your favorites, and you’ll be ready once planting time is here.
• Do call, email, or stop in to your local University of Illinois Extension Office Master Gardener Help Desk with questions and for assistance and guidance for all your spring lawn and garden care.

For more information on gardening, check out the University of Illinois Extension’s website. Also, check out the University of Illinois Extension Horticulture YouTube Channel for videos on other horticulture topics.

• B. Tryon is a certified Master Naturalist volunteer with University of Illinois Extension serving DuPage, Kane and Kendall counties.

Have a question for the Master Gardeners? Residents can contact the Kendall County Master Gardener volunteers on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. by calling 630-553-5823, stopping in at 7775B IL Route 47, Yorkville, or emailing uiemg-kendall@illinois.edu. For helpful hints on what to include in your email, please visit go.illinois.edu/HelpDeskMGdkk.