Garden chores: clean your pots!
Photo credit: Baltimore Sun/Susan Reimer
It is time to drag your garden pots and bird baths out of storage for the season.
But not so fast.
Your flower pots could contain fungus, molds and disease from last season. At the very least, they are dirty. Veteran gardeners advise you to take a few minutes to scrub them with a pot brush and then soak them in a solution of 10 percent bleach for 15 minutes.
Clean your bird baths as well, but rinse them well after the bleach soak so that nothing is left to harm the birds. Bird baths are a perfect breeding ground for avian diseases.
Here in the Mid-Atlantic, it will be weeks until it is safe to put out most annuals in pots, but if you are using your pots to grow lettuces or spinaches, that can happen now. Just sprinkle some seeds!
And the birds will be returning. Make sure they have plenty to eat and drink after their long flight!
