Our Blog

Welcome to pollen season – the fifth season between winter and spring. The timing of this season depends upon your location and climate. You can find the national pollen map at pollen.com

In Florida, pollen season starts in early February with pine pollen. Yet we are still dealing with the pollen into April.

To say that pollen is a pain is an understatement. It torments our sinuses, discolors our cars, and blankets our outdoor living spaces. Just when it starts getting warm enough to enjoy those spaces, it covers everything including the floor, furniture, even the windows.

Prescriptions for pollen management

Since we can’t prevent pollen, we need to come up with remedies for our outdoor spaces – just as the pharmaceutical industry has developed pills and sprays to help our sinuses.

Remedy #1: Keep the pollen out of your outdoor spaces.

If you have a four-season outdoor living space with operable windows and sliding doors, keep them closed when you’re not using the space. This is especially important when it is windy.

Consider retractable vinyl screens. These clear vinyl screens are great for keeping the cold out and the warmth in during cold winter months, but they are also great for keeping the pollen out.

The beauty of this system is that they are retractable, so when it is warm and wonderful out, they retract out of sight. But be sure to lower them when the outdoor living space is not in use. These are great for large back porches but generally not acceptable for front porches. A lot of friends remove and store their outdoor cushions in the early spring and bring them back out in late spring – or when company is coming.

Cover up the things that are the hardest to clean. We’ve all seen car covers and grill covers. Covering your outdoor furniture can be an arduous task, but when the pollen is really bad, they make a huge difference.

Remedy # 2: Pollen Removal

Once the pollen has migrated into your outdoor spaces, consider how to make the removal as painless as possible. Make sure your space is equipped for rinsing, sweeping, and blowing.

Rinsing

If you use your outdoor spaces frequently in spring, you may find yourself having to “rinse and repeat”, and the pollen season wears on. A hose bib inside your outdoor living space can facilitate this effort.

When it is very bad, you can hose down your floor and your furniture. Of course, now everything is wet so you will have to wait to use the space until everything is dry. It is not recommended to do this the morning you are expecting company.

Sweeping

You can always sweep up the pollen that has collected on the floor, but that is a long process unless you have included a central vac electronic dustpan. While it won’t help with the pollen on your furniture, it is a quick and easy way to remove it from the floor. As pollen is very lightweight, it sweeps and gets sucked up easily.

An added benefit is the dust plan also helps with pet hair.

The Blower

Perhaps my husband’s favorite yard tool is his blower. We have the larger version with a turbo charge feature that can blow the pollen off the floor and the furniture. If you have a screen enclosure, you may find the pollen blows in easier than it blows out. This is when a retractable screen greatly increases the efficiency of blowing off your outdoor spaces.

The blower is also great for blowing off the sidewalks and driveway. Here in my new community, we have lots of beautiful live oaks trees surrounding our neighborhood. These trees drop catkins – a long, dangly clusters of pollen filled flowers. I call them pollen worms.

They are especially troublesome as the trees drop them all at once, covering everything including cars, sidewalks, driveway, roof and outdoor living.

What makes it worse, is the catkins are accompanied by dead oak leaves as the new leaves push them off.

Both the catkins and leaves are easily removed by the blower when they are dry. It is needed daily as they continue to drop for two or three weeks. But once they get wet with rain, the pollen worms become pollen buggers and create a mushy mess. At one point, you couldn’t distinguish the roadway from the driveway.

Bottom Line

As dreadful as pollen can be to live with, we can’t let it take over and stop us from enjoying our outdoor living spaces! Builders and designers are always finding ways to upgrade these spaces with TV and fireplaces. Let’s just make sure we equip our houses with the tools needed to keep them usable year-round!