Sprucing up your yard for spring

The winds of spring have begun to blow, making it time to start preparing lawns and gardens for the upcoming growing season.

Before getting your hands dirty, it's important to find out what's going on beneath the surface of your yard.

"They should start with a soil test if they haven't had one in the last couple years," Mike Miller, host of Garden Hotline on KMOX radio in St. Louis, said.

The soil test will tell a gardener what nutrients need to be added to the soil to make it ready for spring.

Application of a pre-emergent herbicide is the next step for the person with a green thumb, but Miller recommends purchasing a soil thermometer rather than marking a day on the calendar for application.

"When you see several days in a row when soil temperature is 55 and up, that's when you should get pre-emergents," Miller said.

Pre-emergent herbicides need to be applied before the weeds have been allowed to germinate.

"The crabgrass roots are so strong," Candice Healey, sales representative at Weed Man in Carbondale, said. "Once they've established roots, there's not a whole lot you can do after a certain amount of time."

Healey's company uses a granular, slow-release fertilizer with its herbicides to feed the yard over a longer period of time.

"With slow-release, it sits there until it gets liquid," Healey said. "It will last longer, so it works over a period of time instead of just working and then stopping."

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Sprucing up your yard for spring