Landscape Maintenance: Year Two
This is the second in a series on the maintenance needed to keep a new landscape looking and performing its best for decades to come. (You can read the first article here.)
Year Two: Happy anniversary! By this time your landscape should be solidly established, and your maintenance duties will evolve accordingly.
Watering: Many California native plants may no longer need any irrigation during the summer. Other low-water and Mediterranean plants may still need some supplemental irrigation, but can have their watering schedules reduced. If you’re not sure which needs what, check with your landscape designer (who should have grouped together plants with similar water needs), and adjust your irrigation timer accordingly.
Mulch: Your new landscape should have included a generous layer of mulch (we usually specify 3” deep) to help retain soil moisture and suppress weeds. Over time, wood chips decompose and blow away, and even gravel mulch gets displaced. Replenish all of it to the original depth, to continue receiving all the benefits mulch provides.
Weeding: If you were diligent about controlling weeds in the first year, and maintained a thick layer of mulch, you should see many fewer weeds the second year. But don’t get complacent: continue to pull, dig, scrape, and otherwise remove any weeds that show up.
Pruning: Repeat your pruning strategy from the first year. If you can bear it, remove fruits as soon as they form again this year. Most perennial grasses can be cut to the ground in winter. If your new trees are becoming too large to prune yourself, if you have heritage trees such as oaks or redwoods on your property, or if you have fruit trees that need special attention, find a licensed arborist who can prune them skillfully and safely.
Fertilizing: The soil amendments added during installation should have sustained your plants so far. Now, your fruits, vegetables, and specialty ornamentals such as hydrangeas may benefit from fertilizers to increase specific nutrients or modify soil pH. You can find kits to test soil fertility yourself or send samples off to a lab for comprehensive analysis. The rest of your landscape may benefit from an application of compost, which will improve the structure of your soil by adding organic matter, or compost tea, which will add beneficial microorganisms such as mycorrhizal fungus. Note, though, that many California natives actually prefer a lean soil, so know your plants before you compost around them. For other plants, compost can be included in your mulch layer (see above), although it will break down faster than wood chips and need to be replenished sooner.
Built Elements: Continue to remain vigilant for anything that could compromise the safety or longevity of pavements, walls, fences, arbors and pergolas, and water features. A leaning fence will never right itself, so call your contractor to correct any defects immediately.
Even a “low-maintenance” landscape needs thoughtful care after it has been installed. Especially if you’ve eschewed lawn in favor of more interesting mixed plantings, the basic “mow and blow” services provided by many so-called gardeners are not appropriate. If you haven’t developed a relationship with a skilled landscape maintenance expert, don’t put it off any longer.
Next, let’s zip ahead to Year Five in the new landscape.