Cutting Down Ornamental Grass And Other Spring Clean Up

Ornamental Grass Maintenance

Preparing my yard for Spring is a lot of work. But it’s work that I love doing. My only wish was that there was more time in the day to get all this Spring clean up done!

This was the view from the French doors in my walkout basement before I cut down the ornamental grass last week.

I have the Karl Foerster variety of Feather Reed Ornamental Grass.

It was actually very pretty from the window. Unfortunately, this was the view on the other side of that door from from the outside.

So it was time to cut it down. I leave it up in the winter because it does add some beauty to the winter landscape as well as a bit of a safe haven for little critters that may be roaming in the cold weather.

Cutting Down the Ornamental Grass

I have always dreaded this chore in the Spring until I came up with a way to simplify the process. I tie string or twine around sections of this grass and then cut it down with a hedge trimmer. Then I can carry the bundles to the fire pit to be burned without a huge mess all over the yard.

So here is the after photo of one of the sections of grass.

This year I decided it was time to divide these clumps of grass. I’m not gonna lie, it took some muscle to get it done. I dug up about half of what grass I had and potted it to give away.

While I know it looks pretty dead in the photo (taken before I divided it up), new growth will soon be pushing up through the ground.

It will look like this by early summer (located in the lower left corner of this photo), but will reach a height of about 5 feet or more and develop feathery tassles on top.

When I tackle this is about the time when I am ready to do some tree trimming and burning of the dead limbs that have accumulated over the winter. Also a great time to throw the old Christmas Tree in the flames. Just be sure there isn’t much of a wind so you don’t have the fire dept arriving to save your house. Also, if you live in an area where burning isn’t allowed, please don’t try this at home.

Here were some other Spring clean up projects

Cutting several sagging limbs out to the 2 huge evergreen trees in the front yard is an annual event. And the limbs are getting so high up in the tree I don’t know how many more times we will be able to do this without professional help. And yes. . . I’m a cheapskate when it comes to paying someone else to do something I believe I can do myself. Or in this case with the help of My Tom.

This multi-trunked tree had a section that was so dead I worried all winter hoping it wouldn’t fall before we were able to get to it this Spring.

Between the 2 of us, ropes, an ax, chainsaw, and My Tom’s old truck, we made it happen . . . it fell in the direction we wanted it to . . . and then we breathed sighs of relief that we survived it without an ambulance run.

It was added to the fire wood pile for cool evening bonfires this year.

Here’s to the end of the really big tree trimming projects. There will be more, but hopefully not to this degree.

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