Prepping Your Outdoor Oasis for the Different Seasons

Prepping your outdoor oasis for the changing seasons requires planning, maintenance, and attention to detail, so when you’re ready, you can sit back, relax, and enjoy your hard work. Here are some tips to help get you started.

Tips to Winterize Your Outdoor Spaces

Preparing your outdoor space for winter is important to ensure it remains functional, safe, and attractive during the colder months. There are many different projects and areas of the home to consider ahead of the season changing from fall to winter.

Our partners at DIY Playbook guide homeowners through several tips with outdoor power equipment rentals from Sunbelt Rentals, including:

• Gutter cleaning: Ensure gutters are clear of debris to help maintain the health of your home. If gutters remain clogged during the winter months, the trapped water can freeze, possibly damaging the gutters and even your home.
• Lawn debris removal: Remove any debris, leaves, or fallen branches from your area to prevent them from accumulating and causing damage to your shrubs, furniture, lawn, or hardscapes during the winter.
• Clean furniture: Outdoor furniture should be cleaned before storing it for the winter to prevent mold or mildew from forming.

Fall, like spring, is also a great time to get your lawn ready for the change of season. Routine lawn care is important to help protect it from damaging insects, weeds, and unpredictable weather. Proper upkeep also ensures your lawn gets the nutrients it needs to flourish and grow, so you’re the envy of the neighborhood!

One important task is aerating your lawn. Aeration can help relieve soil compaction when your grass is in its peak growing period. This allows your grass roots to grow deeper, giving you a fuller, more vibrant, and healthy lawn. You can see how our partners at Bless’er House easily aerated their lawn ahead of winter to make sure it would look beautiful in the spring and summer.

You may also want to consider these additional projects to prepare your home and outdoor areas ahead of winter.

1. Plant care: Prune your trees, shrubs, and perennials to prevent snow and ice buildup that can cause branches to break and damage your property. Pruning in the fall will stimulate growth in the spring. A hedge pole trimmer or cordless hedge trimmer will help you get the job done.
2. Check and clean your hardscapes: Inspect your walkways, steps, and other hardscapes for damage or cracks that may have formed during the warmer months. Repair any damage to prevent potential safety hazards or further damage from the freeze-thaw cycle of winter.
3. Fertilize your lawn: Many types of grass benefit from fertilizing in the fall, “feeding” it before the cold weather hits. Fertilizing before winter helps the roots of the grass absorb and store nutrients. Those roots will continue to grow until the ground freezes, and the nutrients will be stored until spring when they will be ready to thrive. You can use a push fertilizer spreader to help you spread the fertilizer.

Be sure to allow yourself plenty of time to accomplish these tasks before the weather changes and it becomes too cold or unsafe to complete them.

Springtime Projects

Another way to elevate your outdoor space and prepare for summertime is to build an outdoor firepit to enjoy throughout the summer and into the colder months. Firepits extend outdoor entertainment into the evenings and colder months (think making s’mores and chatting into the night around the fire), providing a gathering place for friends and family, additional light for your backyard, or heat for those colder evenings. See how our partner Home With The Daniels built their firepit.

And if you have a firepit, you will definitely need firewood. To assist with harvesting firewood, Sunbelt Rentals offers either a pole saw for cutting smaller limbs and branches to use as fire starters or a chainsaw to cut down larger trees to ensure you have plenty of firewood for the season.

Spring is also the perfect time of the year to plant shrubs and trees. At this time of year, the temperature of the soil is mild, which encourages growth and gives the plants time to spread their roots and become established ahead of winter. Sunbelt Rentals has you covered with the equipment to start your planting. You can rent a skid steer to help haul the plants to the location safely and efficiently and an auger to help drill into compacted soil to easily plant the shrubs or trees.

Ways to Upgrade Your Home’s Exterior for Summer

What better way to usher in spring than by sprucing up your outdoor space and creating new ones. With the warmer temperatures ahead, you’ll spend more time outdoors entertaining and relaxing while enjoying the nice weather.

Many people decide to build a new deck, like our partners at Scarlet Oak Homes, with the help of Sunbelt Rentals tools and equipment rentals. Other summer project ideas people consider include:

1. Add a fence to the yard: Whether it’s a fence for privacy or decor, adding a fence can beautify your property while keeping kids and pets safe in an enclosed area, provide protection from wind, and help to drown out sounds from the road or neighbors.
2. Install a raised garden bed: Raised garden beds are not only beautiful but also can be more productive in providing fruits and vegetables because the soil is less compacted and offers better drainage than a typical garden. A raised bed also helps to keep animals out. Building a raised garden bed requires only a few items and some rot-resistant wood, such as cedar. To help with the build, you’ll need a few small tools that you may not have at home, such as a miter saw to cut the wood and a screw gun to secure the structure together, both available at Sunbelt Rentals for short-term rental.
3. Paint the exterior: A simple way to spruce up the exterior of your home is with a fresh coat of paint on the front door, garage door, or shutters. By renting a paint sprayer from Sunbelt Rentals, you’ll easily be able to tackle the project in an afternoon.

No matter what the project is, big or small, Sunbelt Rentals has you covered with the tools and equipment you’ll need to prep and maintain your home and its surroundings year-round. Depending on the season, there is always a project to be done when you own a home.