With warm weather finally here, plenty of people are getting outside to whip their lawns and gardens into shape. Lindsay Hamilton is the Vice-President of Mountainview Turf Specialist and recently started gardening advice page on social media called Homegrown Small Town. She had a few tricks up her sleeve to share with Equity readers.

When it comes to lawns, May is the time to . . .

spread an initial treatment of fertilizer.

“This time of year specifically, people should be looking at getting a spring fertilizer down, something with high nitrogen, fast release,” she said. “Their grass has been basically sleeping all winter long and now is the time to wake it up, green it up and get it ready for a great summer season where it’s going to look healthy.”

“Right now is the perfect time to do it … your next application, which would be a slow release fertilizer, for the summer, would be done about mid-July,” she added.

Now is also the time for overseeding if needed.

“What happens when you do an overseeding in the hot summer, it can grow but it’s completely dependent on our conditions,” Hamilton said. “So if it’s going to be over 40 degrees or is going to have a long period of drought, means that you’re going to have to baby that seed and you’re likely not going to get as great a result, so doing it right now in the spring time is ideal, and if you don’t have time to do it this spring, just wait until the fall.”

She also recommended those with evergreen trees on their property to consider spreading lime to combat soil acidity.

“Acidic soil is not friendly to any plant, whether it’s your lawn or your garden. So doing an application of lime in the spring time is going to help remediate that high acidity.”

As for the garden, Hamilton said that soil temperature is an important factor to consider, particularly when it comes to more sensitive plants like peppers or carrots.

“Soil takes a lot longer to warm up than people assume and you want your soil temperature to be a consistent 10 degrees at the minimum, day and night,” she said. “Paying attention to the forecast is a great way to do it, if you’re looking at your night time temperatures, if they’re 10 degrees or above for a consistent few days, usually that’s a sign that your soil is going to be similar to the set temperature. Or you can stick a thermometer in. I’ve been known to walk around the garden with a

thermometer too. I look crazy but it works.”

“If everyone’s itching to get out in that garden, some things that they can plant are beets, radishes, kale, potatoes, onions, you can go ahead and do your potted annuals, perennials, perennials are already kind of used to surviving winter, so they can survive some frost as well, so go ahead and stick them in the ground,” she concluded.

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