North Country Maturing Gardener, a garden blogger and master gardener in New Hampshire, published her list of garden chores for September and I thought I'd share a few of them.

Not like any of us need help thinking of what to do in the garden as fall drifts into winter.....

She suggests fertilizing shrubs and perennials to help them through the winter. Bulbs, too, scattering 5-10-20 on the ground above them. (If you can remember where they are.)

Stop pruning shrubs because that encourages new growth, which will probably be bitten by frost.

Time to divide daylilies, irises, hostas and peonies before the soil gets too cold. It gives the roots time to settle in.

Stop picking roses and leave the hips. It lets the plants know it is time to harden off for winter.

Dig up summer-flowering bulbs: glads, dahlia, begonias and tuberoses.

She also suggests that we remove the blooms from tomato plants. That will allow the plant to finish off the fruit that is already in place.

It's also time to plant bulbs and seed or overseed the grass.

Remember that North Country Maturing Gardener is in New Hampshire. She is much closer to winter than we are, so you have some time to get these things done. Just don't procrastinate too long. Whatever you get done this fall is one less thing you will have to do next spring.

Photo credit: Flickr/Merete

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Categories: Weekend Chores
        

I wrote today in The Sun about giving your gardens a boost in August, and Nancy Moitrier of Designs for Greener Gardens in Annapolis has some additional thoughts.

She is a big fan of the restorative powers of fish emulsion as a pick-me-up, especially if it is sprayed right on the leaves. That way, it gets where it needs to be without making that long trip up the roots.

Watering your gardens might be the most important thing you can do for them in August, but she says you might want to break up the mulch before you do or it will run right off. By this time of year, the mulch has formed almost a crust on top of the garden beds and it won't allow water - or rain - to penetrate.

By this time as well, slow-release fertilizers will have been washed out of that fancy container soil you purchased in the spring. That means the containers need to be fertilized at least once a week.

If the tips of leaves on container plants are looking brown, it could be a build-up of salt in the soil is burning the roots. That happens when you use too much fertilizer during the summer, she said. Leach the salts out of the container soil by watering thoroughly three or for times. letting the water run out of the bottom of the container.

"Then you can start fresh and fertilize again," she said.

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Margaret Roach thinks August - not April - is the cruelest month. At least in the garden.

The writer behind the blog A Way to Garden writes about the garden chores of August this week, and she sounds tired already.

"Hazy, hot and humid ... and plum tuckered out. But give up we must not," she writes.

At the top of her list of chores are weeding and watering.

Whatever you do, don't let those weeds go to seed or they will multiply like, well, weeds, she advises. Make a pass through each bed each week if for no other reason that the weeds steal the moisture that is in short supply in August.

Speaking of moisture. Roach advises us not to bother watering the lawn. It will bounce back. Focus on new plantings.

That's just the beginning of her list of August chores. If you have the energy, read more on A Way to Garden.

Photo credit: Kenneth K. Lam/Baltimore Sun

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We are heading into the hot part of the summer -- the time when you wish you had listened when they told you to plant natives.

It is the time of year when the best we can do is maintain - keep the gardens neat and watered in between thunderstorms.

P. Allen Smith of Garden Home is busier than most in the garden in July. Here is his list of chores.

• If the weather turns dry, avoid fertilizing your plants. It will further stress your plants to put energy into new growth during periods of drought.
• Raise the blade on your lawn mower. The tall grass will keep the roots cool and conserve moisture – a must during the hot, dry weather typical of July.
• Order Colchicum autumnale bulbs for planting in August and September. Also known as autumn crocus, these petite pale pink to lavender blooms will appear in fall. 
• If you’ve been pinching back your garden mums to encourage a more compact shape, it’s time to stop and allow them to set flower buds.
• Now is a good time to make rose cuttings. Choose stems that are just under the diameter of a pencil. Make your cut at an angle just above a leaf node. Be sure the cutting is at least 4 to 5 inches long and has a couple sets of leaves. 
• Tomato horn worms are large with green and white stripes and a red “horn” near the end. Hand picking is the best method of control. However, if you see one covered in tiny, upright eggs leave it be. These are cocoons of the braconid wasp, a predator of the tomato horn worm.
• Some potted plants may need daily watering. Small pots, hanging baskets and window boxes in sunny locations may even need to be watered twice a day. If the top few inches of the soil are dry or the stems are wilting, it’s time to water.
• It’s time to start planning for your fall vegetable garden. For plants grown from seed, make sure they have enough time to mature before the first autumn freeze. Check the back of the seed packet to find the number of days until harvest to determine when you should plant.
• Keep those weeds pulled - especially those that spread by reseeding. If you can get rid of them before they go to seed you’ll have less work next year.
• Morning glories don't like soil that's too rich. In fact, if it's too rich they will produce lots of vine and not many flowers, so be easy on the fertilizer.
• As gourds begin to form use a nail to scratch a pattern into the shell. The pattern will expand as the gourd matures.
• Provide a source of clean water to attract birds to your garden. Bird baths should be shallow with a rough surface for the birds to stand on. Place the bath at least 4 to 5 feet away from feeders to prevent droppings and seed debris from contaminating the water.
• Use an old phone book as a flower press to preserve late summer blossoms. Choose flowers with flat or small centers so they will compress easily. Arrange the flowers on a piece of cardboard and hold them in place with a little clear tape. Label each one and write something about where it was growing, put it in the phone book and add a weight on top. Check after a couple of days. Once dried, the flowers can be glued onto cards to make pictures, or to embellish photos and letters.

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All this rain has sure been good for the tomatoes.

Maybe too good.

My plants, heirloom Brandywine, are almost 6 feet tall, and there are more than a dozen tomatoes on each plant, with dozens more blooms.

But the rain has encouraged more than the fruit to grow. The leaves and branches are close to choking the cages around the plants.

I know all about pinching off the "suckers" that appear in the joint between the branch and the trunk. They grow into branches that never produce fruit and only sap the plant of energy.

But for a more detailed look at how to prune your tomatoes - as well as an explanation of why you should - take a look at this article and video on the Fine Gardening  mazgazine web site.

The goal is to reduce the leaf surface, which draws energy and sugar from the production of fruit.

Keep reading and you will see some drawings that illustrate how to prune your tomatoes.

Photo credit: Baltimore Sun/Jerry Jackson

Continue reading "Garden chores: pruning tomato plants" »

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 Photo credit: Chicago Tribune/Bill Hogan

My colleague Frank Roylance, the blogger over at Maryland Weather,  says this incessant rain should end with Saturday's afternoon thunderstorms. Sunday - and going forward should be sunny and clear.

If you are like me, you are dreading what you will find in the garden after all this wet weather: mildews, blights, slugs, bugs, weeds and wind damage.

Kathy Huber of the Houston Chronicle offers this list of important chores to do in the garden after a heavy rain.

1. Cover exposed roots

If  water has washed soil and mulch from garden beds, cover exposed roots with compost-enriched soil and mulch.

2. Replenish nutrients

Water leaches nutrients from the soil. To replenish, treat garden soil with fish emulsion or seaweed extract. Replenish container nutrients with a slow-release fertilizer.

3. Empty containers of water

Overturn wheelbarrows, buckets, pot saucers or any container holding rainwater. These are mosquito breeding grounds.

4. Eliminate snail and slug hiding places

These plant-damaging creatures like cool, moist, dark places such as overturned pots, under bricks or boards.

5. Weed

Roots come up more easily in moist soil. Mulch to discourage others from sprouting.

6. Aerate lawns

Do this when the soil is no longer soggy. Apply an organic-based fertilizer. Apply liquid iron to pale or yellowish areas that have developed due to prolonged wet conditions that decrease oxygen supply in the soil and slow nutrient and mineral uptake.

7. Watch for fungal and bacterial diseases

 Some are encouraged by wet conditions. For example, wilted tomatoes that do not revive may be infected and need to be removed.

8. Water garden cleanup

Water gardens contaminated by floodwaters should be drained and cleaned. After cleaning, replace water and plants.

9. Note areas in your garden that were slow to drain.

Consider a swale (rocky creek) that will channel and carry water away, or a system that will carry heavy rain toward the nearest city drain. Beds raised 6 or more inches help prevent prolonged wet conditions that suffocate plant roots.

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Categories: Weekend Chores
        

Danny Lipford, host of Today's Homeowner, and the go-to home guy for The Weather Channel, is right.

June is a terrific month for working in the garden, especially in the Mid-Atlantic.

The heat of summer has not yet peaked and the rains of recent weeks mean the garden is in raging bloom! (So are the mosquitoes. See one of my earlier posts for what to do about them.)

Here's is Lipford's list of chores for June.

• Continue pruning blooming shrubs as soon as they finish blooming.
• Deadhead spring-blooming shrubs, to focus the plant’s energy toward strong growth and next year’s blooms.  
• Shear hedges while the growth is still soft and easy to shape.
• Watch for black spot and powdery mildew on roses and other plants – apply fungicide and remove (and destroy – don’t compost) any diseased foliage.
• Add extra mulch to shallow-rooted shrubs (like azaleas, camellias, and rhododendrons), to help them hold moisture.
• Remove aphids with a blast of water from the hose.
• Reduce (or stop) fertilizing as the temperature heats up.
• Continue planting container-grown trees and shrubs, but keep them well watered.
• Lightly shear conifers (junipers, cypress, etc.) but don’t cut back to bare wood.
  

Continue reading "Garden to-do list" »

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 It is June, writes Marie Iannoti, garden writer for About.com , and gardens are in full throttle. It is not the time to rest, because  the weeds, pests and dead-heads will get far ahead of you.

Here is her advice.

• Work around the humidity (early am, late afternoon / evening)
• Keep new plants well watered
• Check your mulch
• Side dress with compost or manure or feed with fish emulsion, for mid-season pick-up
• Check foliage for signs of nutrient deficiencies 
• Give the compost a turn
• Give your houseplants a summer vacation outdoors
• Make sure the birds have fresh water
• Keep up on deadheading, for long season bloom
• Pinch back tall growing fall bloomers like asters, monarda and helianthus

Vegetables

• Stop harvesting asparagus and rhubarb
• Replace crops that have bolted with the heat and cool season flowers, like pansies
• Get any remaining warm season vegetables in the ground
• Keep up blanching of celery, cauliflower and tender greens
• Plant a new batch of bush beans every couple of weeks
• Keep tomato plants staked as they grow. Pinch out suckers.
• Put a couple of drops of mineral oil on corn silks within a week after they appear, to prevent corn earworm

Fruit

• Be prepared for ‘June Drop’ of fruit from fruit trees. They’re just thinning out to a manageable crop size. Clean up any fallen fruit.
• Protect ripening berries with nets or row covers

Trees & Shrubs

• If you want to prune or shear your evergreens, do so as soon as the new growth starts to turn a darker green. Once the wisteria finishes blooming, you can do a maintenance pruning to keep it in check

Pests

• Summer is for insects. Be vigilant!
• Keep watch for 4-lined plant bug damage, especially on the mint family
• Japanese Beetles - They’re back!

Warmer Areas

• Start new seeds of sun loving crops, for the fall
• Cut back on mowing.

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Some advice from Charlotte Kidd of Radnor, Pa., who writes about Mid-Atlantic gardening for the National Gardening Association:

• Despite some residual winter chill, mosquitoes are starting to buzz around the gardens. We tend to think of emptying water from pots, buckets, and saucers. Some mosquito types that spread West Nile virus breed in the wet leaves in roof gutters. Clean your house gutters and encourage neighbors to do the same.
• There are several ways to stop wriggling mosquito larvae from infesting rainbarrel water. Some gardeners recommend keeping a layer of vegetable oil on top of the water. Others add the biological control Bt-israelensis (Bt-i), which is in mosquito dunks that last 30 days. One dunk treats 100 feet of water; it can be broken in half. Some rainbarrel plans include instructions to place a piece of wire mesh over open water.
• Your garden doesn't always need new mulch. Two or three inches are enough to suppress weeds and retain moisture. If last season's mulch is sufficient in your garden beds, fluff it up. By that I mean use a hoe or cultivator to break the mulch crust. Chop it and mix it, uprooting any small, sprouting weeds in the process. Fluffing will allow water to reach the soil and roots beneath the mulch layer.
• For broader, shorter plants, clip 2 or 3 inches off the tops of Phlox paniculata and Asters. Cut the stem just above the connection where leaf meets stem meets the node. For a longer blooming stand of summer Phlox, clip the front half of cluster lower than stems in the rear. Be sure to prune off the dead Phlox flowers to encourage more successive flowering.
• (I would add, cut back your sedum, too, and your cone flowers. This keeps the blooms from flopping over and, in the case of sedum, breaking off. You should also be pinching back your mums until at least the Fourth of July.)

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Last week, we gave you half of P. Allen Smith's list of garden chores to do in May. Smith, of Garden Home, says he makes that list long so he has more time to spend in the garden.

The rest of us? Not so much. So here is the rest of Smith's list.

Before planting in clay pots, pre-soak them in a wheelbarrow of water for 5 or 10 minutes. If you plant in terra-cotta when it is dry, it wicks moisture from the soil and the new plantings.

Fertilize and deadhead your repeat blooming roses after the flowers fade to encourage a second round in early summer.

When applying granular fertilizer, avoid getting it on foliage to prevent fertilizer burn.

Photo courtesy of outbackpatio.com

 Are you battling powdery mildew on tall garden phlox? Try one of these fungus resistant varieties: Phlox ‘Miss Kelly’, Phlox ‘Katherine’, Phlox ‘Bright Eyes’, Phlox ‘David’, Phlox ‘Franz Schubert’.

Welcome toads to your garden by offering them a source of water and a place to stay. One toad can eat from ten to twenty thousand insects a year. You can make a toad house by partially burying a terra cotta pot on its side.

To help your garden mums maintain a more compact form, pinch them back after they are 6 to 8 inches tall. The idea is to reduce the height by about half. Repeat the process again in mid-July.

Fertilize your warm season lawn grass in June. If using a granular fertilizer, add flour to the spreader. This will help you see where you’ve been so you won’t over fertilize. For the least impact on the environment, choose an organic fertilizer blend.

Sow the seeds of summer annuals such as cosmos, celosia, sunflowers and globe amaranth. These can be sown directly in the garden after the last frost date has passed and the soil is warm.

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P. Allen Smith of Garden Home says that he makes a long list of garden chores for May because that's when the garden is at is peak and the chores give him an excuse to spend extra time outside.

Here's part of his list. We'll give you the rest next Friday so you don't try to get all this done in one weekend.

Enclose your veggie garden with a rabbit proof fence. A 30-inch tall chicken wire fence will keep rabbits out of your garden. To keep them from digging under the fence bury the wire about 1-foot deep and bend the top of the wire outward about a foot so they can't hop over.

Evergreen magnolias such a M. grandiflora should be planted in late spring when their roots are actively growing. If transplanted in late fall or winter their roots will not be able to grow quickly enough to become established.

Wrap tomato seedling stems with aluminum foil to deter cutworms. Once the plants mature the stem will thicken enough that these pests won’t be a problem and you can remove the foil.

 Deadhead rhododendron blooms. This will direct the plants energy toward producing flower buds for next year rather than seeds.

Repot houseplants that have outgrown their accommodations. Move them outdoors for their summer vacation when nighttime temperatures stay consistently above 60 degrees F.

Change the color of your old-fashioned hydrangea blooms. If you have a blue hydrangea, and would like it to have lavender to pink flowers, raise the alkalinity in your soil by adding 4 ounces of lime around the base of the shrub. Do this incrementally until you get the color you want. Depending on your soil, it could take a few growing seasons. To turn a pink hydrangea blue, add aluminum sulfate to the soil around the base of your plant. Follow the label directions carefully and don’t overdo it.

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 Photo credit: KAREN BLEIER AFP/Getty Images

Again, thanks to our friends at Dayton Nursery for their very complete garden chores list.

Here's what you will need to accomplish this month and, as you can see, a lot of it involves spraying to prevent damage and infestations.

However, we are all sensitive to using too many chemicals in the garden. I'd like to hear from organic gardeners out there. How do you control for these same pests? Or do you?

I will choose from among those who post a reply and send a wonderful new organic gardening book that came to me.

• Plant summer flowering bulbs such as Gladiolus and Cannas early in May and Dahlias towards the end of May. Divide the bulbs if you want (if over one year old), right at planting time.
• Fertilize trees, shrubs and perennials with Plant-tone or Holly-tone if you have not done this yet.
• Edge and clean up landscape beds, apply Preen weed preventer and then a light cover of new mulch to give beds that fresh look if you have not yet.
• Start a spray program for roses including teas, floribundas and grandifloras to prevent disease and insect damage.  Neem Oil and Bi-Carb are both excellent organic controls.
• Get ready to spray Dogwoods and large-leaved Rhododendron to prevent borer damage.  We recommend you spray Eight on the trunk and lower branches the week of May 1st, May 15th and May 30th.
• Take a walk through garden centers and nurseries at the end of April through mid-May especially to get an idea of what is available for your lawn or garden as this is the time of year that selection is greatest.
• Apply Bayer's Rhododendron & Azalea Insect & Disease Control insecticide as directed to Azaleas, small-leaved Rhododendron and Pieris to control lace bugs.  Apply again in six weeks.  Be sure to water in well.
• Spray Bonide Systemic Insect Control to clean up an existing infestation of lacebug.  Spray after blooms have dropped (about June 5) and repeat in 10 days.  Be sure to get under the leaves where the bugs are hiding.
• Plant tomato and pepper plants and most other annuals when the danger of frost has passed and the ground has warmed.  This is usually around the 3rd to 4th week of May.
• Apply a weed & feed as directed to your lawn the last week of May to control broadleaf weeds.

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 Photo credit: Real Simple magazine

Real Simple, one of my favorite magazines for its practical and semi-spiritual content, suggests in this month's issue (there is make-up on the cover) that getting organized isn't just something you do in closets. You do it in the garden, too.

The magazine published this wonderful picture of a very colorful, very clean, very organized potting table and lots of very perfect gardening tools and accessories.

It could make a gardener cry.

But here are the suggestions that go with the pretty picture in the May issue:

1. Shelf. Hang a galvanized-metal shelf ($129, Peddlers Home Design, 205-877-3030) on the back of the house or the side of a shed to store extra pots. Spray the unit with clear Rust-Oleum and it can stay outside year-round.

2. Potting bench. This indoor-outdoor garden center ($200, amazon.com) folds up and features two roomy shelves, plus a trellised back for hanging tools and twine. It’s made of fir, a hardy wood that withstands winter weather.

3. Bushel baskets. Keep them on hand for fresh-picked produce and weeds ($6 each, michaels.com for locations).

4. Pots. Bags of potting soil and fertilizer can tip over easily (and they’re not much to look at, either). Instead, pour the soil into rarely used pots, or try these blue Imusa enamel vessels ($28 each, amazon.com).

5. Hose organizer. You can’t attach a wall-mounted hose organizer to a brick house or one with fragile shingles. The steel Hose Butler ($35, merrifieldgardencenter.com) sticks in the ground and can be easily repositioned.

6. Buckets. These galvanized-metal English Keepers ($39 to $59 each, smithandhawken.com) have locking lids so squirrels can’t get at birdseed.

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Categories: Weekend Chores
        

Photo credit: The Sun/Chiaki Kawajiri

It looks like this is going to be a fantastic weekend. Sunny, with temperatures in the 80s. And if you have been working right along in your yard and gardens, you probably don't have a whole lot left to do to get ready for summer.

Nevertheless, here is a list of chores, courtesy of Danny Lipford, home expert for The Weather Channel. But I'd like to add one important thought.

Your body is probably not used to the heat - certainly not used to 80-degree days - and if you try to do it all this weekend, you are going to be sorry. Make sure you take breaks and drink plenty of fluids. After all, that big pile of mulch will still be waiting for you next weekend, too.

Oh. And don't forget the sunscreen. And a hat. Heavens, I sound like your mother.

• Plant gift varieties of chrysanthemums, hydrangeas, spring bulbs, and azaleas outdoors. Some are not cold-hardy, so check the variety before leaving it out over next winter.
• Lightly fertilize all cool-season lawn grasses (such as fescue and bluegrass). Aerate and dethatch only if absolutely necessary – those tasks are best done in the fall.
• Repot, prune, and feed your houseplants. Address insect or disease problems immediately. Give a little more water to cacti and succulents that are blooming or actively growing.
• Put out plenty of food for hungry migrating birds! Watch for hummingbirds on their journey north.
• Observe your garden during the spring thaw and rains. Note and address any drainage problems.
• Apply mulch. Consider adding an organic weed preventer, such as corn gluten, under your mulch to save work later.

And enjoy the sunshine!!!!

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This weekend's to-do list is another hefty one. Don't dispair. Soon the work of spring will be done and you can simply tour your garden each evening with a glass of wine and do a little dead-heading.

Well, that's what I tell myself, anyway.

These suggestions are from weekendgardener.net

• Lift, divide and replace chrysanthemums as soon as new shoots appear. Each rooted shoot or clump will develop into a fine plant for late summer bloom. Pinch the tops when the plants are about 4 inches high to thicken the plant.
• This is also the time to divide mint, chive, tarragon and creeping thyme, and to thin vegetables that were sown too thickly, like basil, carrots, green onions or lettuce.
• Label the clumps of daffodils that are too crowded, as overcrowding inhibits blooming. Dig up and separate them in July.
• Cut flower stalks back to the ground on daffodils, hyacinths and other spring flowering bulbs as the flowers fade. Do not cut the folliage until it dies naturally. The leaves are necessary to produce strong bulbs capable of flowering.
• Finish planting summer-flowering bulbs, like tuberose, gladiolus, dahlias and callas. If you are going to stake your dahlias, do it now so that you don't injure the tubers later.
• Buy a hose-end shut-off valve. These are available separately as part of a watering wand. This allows you to turn off the hose as you move around the yard. Also, when you are through watering, you can shut off the water immediately, rather than let the hose run while you hurry back to the spigot.
• And this advice from me: Take a couple of hours and clean off the garage shelves where you keep your gardening hand tools, chemicals and fertilizers. Get rid of the real bad stuff, such as Seven, or any other harsh pesticides. Empty the spray bottles you used last spring for fungicides and rose treatments and clean them out.
• And before planting your deck pots this season, empty them of last year's dirt, clean them with a bleach spray or a bleach solution, rinse thoroughly and let them dry in the sun. Use fresh bags of potting soil. This will help prevent the transfer of disease and pests from last year.

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Categories: Weekend Chores
        

 Photo credit: Melanie McCabe, Homestead Gardens.

It isn't as difficult to get to work in the garden in April. The weather can be iffy, but it can also be warm and sunny. And the garden is starting to green-up and the perennials are emerging, so there is a reward waiting for you.

You know what you have left to do. But here are a couple of things you might not have thought about. Special thanks to the folks at Dayton Nurseries and to P. Allen Smith - the bulb trick at the end of this list is his idea, and it is a terrific one.

• Apply aluminum sulphate as directed in to blue hydrangeas to ensure a sky blue color in summer. Repeating this application in mid to late May is advisable. For pink hydrangeas, aluminum sulphate will turn the flower color to dark purple.
• An application of dormant oil as directed to all trees and shrubs will kill most insect eggs and scale insects waiting to hatch and come alive.  Spray only when plants are dormant and when temperatures will remain above freezing for a minimum of 24 hours after spraying.
• April weather can be fickle. Resist the urge to plant warm season annuals and vegetables until the last frost date has passed in your area.
• The best way to remove dandelions from your lawn, and the most earth-friendly, is to dig them out with a long forked tool. It’s important to dig out the dandelion’s taproot.
• Why spend another summer fighting with your garden hose? Before the growing season gets underway invest in quality hoses that won’t kink, crack or misbehave.
• Save a spot for fall bulb planting. Here is an easy way to hold a place for them in the border. Amid the spring plants, dig holes where you’ll want to later plant the bulbs. Make sure the holes are large enough to accommodate a good size plastic nursery pot that has drainage holes. Put the pots in the holes, and then refill the pots with the dug soil. In the fall, lift the pots, place the bulbs in the bottom of the holes and dump the soil over them.

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Categories: Weekend Chores
        

There is no end to garden chores....

Special thanks to the folks at Weekend Gardener for today's list of things to tackle this weekend.

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Categories: Weekend Chores
        

Get out in the garden and get to work! There will be plenty of time to admire your handywork in June. In the meantime....

• There is still plenty of time to order perennials for this season, so get your catalogs out and make a list. Also, now is the time to order your summer-blooming bulbs. They will give the garden color in the late summer when other perennials start to fade.
• Think about planting cool season annuals, such as pansies or primroses. They will dress your garden up until the blooming really starts.
• Transplant roses, shrubs or ornamental trees before the leaf buds open.
• Fertilize, using a slow-release fertilizer such as Osmocote. Scratch it into the soil around perennials and shrubs.
• Watch your peonies and feed them with a low nitrogen fertilizer when they are about 3 inches tall.
• Clean the debris out of your water features, gutters and rain barrel. Turn on your hose.
• To repair bare spots in your lawn, the folks at P. Allen Smith Garden House suggest combining 5 shovels full of sand, 1 shovel full of grass seed and 1 cup of slow release fertilizer. Cover bare spots, tamp down and water.
• According to the Ohio Agricultural Research & Development Center, March is the perfect time to trim your roses into shape and cut off all the dead wood. Only cut out dead wood in climbers, don’t trim.
• Don’t wait much longer to call a landscape designer if you are planning new beds or major changes. In a few weeks, they will be too busy to call you back.
• Don’t forget your trees! Fertilize them now and call soon to have them professionally trimmed and shaped if they need it.

Speaking of trees. Homestead Gardens is supposed to arrive today to trim the giant Nelly Stevens Holly at the front corner of my house. Check back for pictures - maybe even video - of the process.

Photo by Susan Reimer

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Categories: Weekend Chores
        

Done and undone. Two areas of my garden in Annapolis. One has been cleaned up. The other, not so much. Photos by Susan Reimer

If you have gardened for more than a single season, you don't need me to tell you what needs to be done as the weather warms and the ground thaws.

But indulge me.

I am one of those people who needs to make lists. It makes me feel like my life has order, even if it doesn't.

Here's a list of some of March's garden chores. Don't look now, but you are two weeks behind.

• Before you do anything else, clean the dead leaves, desiccated perennial foliage, twigs and debris out of your beds. Cut back ornamental grasses and liriope.
• Remove the weeds, especially the chickweed, which are already growing. Consider applying Preen, a product which retards weed growth in your beds.
• Break up last year’s mulch, which might have formed an impenetrable crust over some places in your garden.
• Turn your compost pile, which will start to heat up soon. You probably ignored it all winter. Harvest the newly minted "dirt" from the bottom of the pile and, using a hand cultivator, work it into the soil around your perennials, being careful not to damage the roots.
• Your bulbs are no doubt emerging. Dust around the shoots with Bulb-Tone to ensure strong bulb growth next year.
• Take your lawn mower in for blade sharpening, an oil change, new spark plugs and an air filter. This is the busy season for such work, so you may have to wait several weeks before your mower is done. Remember next fall to do it after your last mowing of the season so you won’t be up against a spring deadline.
• Apply crab grass preventer and fertilize your lawn.
• Plant lettuce and spinach seeds. You can plant parsley, now, too, as well as onion sets and peas. But make sure the soil isn’t too soggy.

Posted by Susan Reimer at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Weekend Chores