A chance to complete the tasks that have been on your mind

The closets are cleaned. The sock drawer is organized.

Maybe it’s time you turned your attention to the outdoors.

This might be your opportunity to accomplish some little tasks that have been on your mind for several years – things you just kept pushing to the bottom of the list. Maybe some of these could be fun.

• Tidy things up. I learned a long time ago that a landscape doesn’t have to be complicated to be beautiful. “Simple” and “neat” are both great operative words. Use your hand shears to trim spring-blooming shrubs and vines once they finish flowering. Guide their growth for 2020. If you have tree seedlings that have come up in flowerbeds or groundcovers that have outgrown their boundaries, take time now, while it’s cool, to get them out of the way. “Volunteer” trees are rarely of desirable species and they’re almost never growing in acceptable places.
• Take time now to develop your own plans for a better landscape around you. Take measurements of the parts of your gardens you’d like to keep (drive, walks, pool, patio and, of course, the house). Make a list of the things that need to come out. Download and print graph paper from the Internet and draw in your house and those permanent features to scale. Make copies of your drawing and set it aside marked as the “Original.”
• As you’re running essential errands the next several weeks take notes and photos of landscapes you really like and be thinking about how you could work them into your own garden designs. Then, working off one of your copies, start dreaming and sketching. Don’t be afraid to change things or even start over. It’s a lot easier on paper than it will be later, once plants are growing.
• Nurseries are bending over backwards to accommodate customers. Usually by April they’re so busy they can hardly move, but now they’re just trying to get plants and products into their customers’ hands. Work with your favorite local nursery. Look at their website. Give them a call and ask them what plants look best. Ask about hours and if they offer curbside pickup like groceries are doing (most nurseries do). Many even delivery right to your door.
• I had a wild idea that might be fun if you know the folks on your block. How about having a virtual clean-up/color-up day. Call a Zoom meeting to talk it over online. Perhaps you have equipment or tools you can share back and forth (after thorough cleaning, of course). Maybe you could pool an order of plants and have it brought to one centralized front yard for pickup, one neighbor at a time.
• If there’s an older person on your block who isn’t able to tend to his or her yard, maybe you take turns mowing that yard or tending the beds. Somehow there’s a way to be a community and still maintain good individual separation. It’s actually a good lesson for children to see people helping people.
• Want to grow some of your own groceries? There’s still time to plant vegetables. The really important crops are at prime time for planting. Choose small and mid-sized tomato varieties like cherry types, Roma, Porter, Super Fantastic, Better Boy, Early Girl and Celebrity, among others. Avoid Big Boy, Beefsteak and other large-fruiting types. They won’t set fruit in the heat. Other great crops to plant now: peppers, bush green beans, summer squash, cucumbers and, if you have enough room, corn and melons. In a couple of weeks, once it’s warmer: okra and southern peas.
• If you have an automatic sprinkler system you can do your own irrigation audit. Have someone run the controller from inside the house to turn the system on, one station at a time. Look for heads that are broken, covered up by foliage or misaligned. Repair each as needed. Check, too, for valves that aren’t opening and closing properly. That may be a more challenging repair because valves aren’t always right where the problem shows up. A valve that won’t close completely allows a head to leak slowly, even if that head is 50 feet away. It will always be the lowest head on the system. When you see that head dribbling slowly, you know to look for the valve as the source of the trouble.
• And finally the weeds – the every-lovin’ weeds. “Should I pull ‘em, Neil?” My answer is always an emphatic, “No!” The ugly little annual bluegrass (Poa annua) with all of its tiny seedheads is just about to die and go away, so there’s no reason to pull it. Just wait a few weeks. Oh, and mark the calendar to apply pre-emergent granules the last week of August or the first week of September so we won’t be having this conversation again this time next year.

And, as for the broadleafed (non-grassy) weeds, use a 2,4-D based broadleafed weedkiller spray to eliminate them. Or, if you have mostly large, coarse-textured weeds like thistles and bur clover, you could use the corner of a sharpened hoe to chop-cut them out. There’s just no need to pull them.

You can hear Neil Sperry on KLIF 570AM on Saturday afternoons 1-3 pm and on WBAP 820AM Sunday mornings 8-10 am. Join him at www.neilsperry.com and follow him on Facebook.