Spring is just around the corner, and with it comes some time you get to spend in the sunshine and warm weather along with some worthwhile and rewarding work. However, there are specific tasks that you can handle during the spring to best prepare your yard for the year. The following provides you with some recommendations for successfully preparing your landscaping in the spring.

Improve Soil Condition

One of the first steps you can take in your spring cleaning around your landscaping is to clear out any dead organic materials that are left behind from winter weather. This may include vegetation, leaves, stems, and last year's garden plants that may have been buried under a layer of snow and ice. A great benefit to this cleanup is that you can pile the materials right into a compost pile if you have one, and if you don't have one, you can start one in a corner of your yard. Because the material has been subject to freezing temperatures and moisture along with some warmer temperatures of spring, it will have already begun to decompose and makes a great addition to compost along with newspaper shavings or some ashes from your fireplace.

Rake up all the dead material from your bedding and landscaping soil to expose the soil and prepare it for new plants and some fertilization. If you have some compost that is ready to add to your soil, mix it into the dirt and work the compost in so it reaches several inches in depth. Or you can add in some bagged manure or fertilizer from a local garden nursery. If the area is large, a rototiller is a good tool to help prepare the soil and loosen it deeply. Then, plan out where you will add various new annuals and perennials to your yard.

Add in New Vegetation

Fertilizer can be added to your soil when you prepare the soil for plants, but you can also add it into the soil when you add new plantings, whether they are shrubs, flowers, or trees. However, be sure you remove any weeds from the soil, even if they look dead from the winter. Weed seeds can still be viable within the dead vegetation and will germinate if they are left in the soil. After you plant new seedlings or plants, water the soil of the site immediately.

When you plant a tree, you will need to dig a hole slightly larger than the root ball so you can add in soil around the exterior of the roots. Always place some loose soil combined with compost, then place the tree upon the soil and work in more rich soil around to fill in the hole.