Depending on where you are located, if you listen carefully your garden might be beckoning you to come outside and play. It’s time to take the tools down from the garage wall, to inflate the tire on the wheelbarrow, to sharpen the pruners and to start spring cleaning.
A word of caution; don’t try to complete this task all in one day! You’ll feel pain the next day from muscles you forgot you had, so take a measured approach and work until you feel fatigued. Hang up the tools and start fresh the next day.
The list of tasks starts with removing any winter mulch that you laid on beds last fall. This allows the sunshine to warm up the soil and prevents plants from growing too quickly under the cover of warm mulch, only to be damaged by frosts once the mulch is removed.
Any leaves and assorted debris can be raked off the soil at that time, and then you can do the same job on your lawn. If you have a compost bin now is the time to harvest the completed product to spread onto exposed soil in flower beds and vegetable gardens. The space thus created can be filled by the mulch and leaves you’ve just collected.
Depending on the size of your garden this could be enough for day one. If you didn’t do so last fall perennials stems could be cut down and disposed of, and while you’re doing that check the condition of the plants and decide whether it’s time to divide and re-plant.
Late spring or summer blooming perennials like daylilies, Shasta daisies, nepeta, hostas and astilbe could be dug up and split as soon as the soil has warmed up a bit.
Pruning is the next step and in March our phones at the garden centre are ringing with customer’s questions about how and when. Different plants have different needs, and the timing varies as well, depending mainly on when the plant flowers. If you’re not sure how to proceed drop in or call your local garden centre, or sit down at your computer and go to
www.plantamnesty.org. This Seattle-based organization provides some of the best and most entertaining pruning advice found on the internet.
Once the beds are cleaned out and the plants are pruned if necessary, think about fertilizing. Established plants eventually deplete the nutrients in soils and they need an annual application of something to keep them happy. Whether it’s your own compost, an organic or a synthetic fertilizer it should be applied and scratched into the soil around and between plants. Don’t use too much and use something specifically for the plants you’re applying it to.
Finally, while you’re out there take a critical look at plants that didn’t perform well last year, or haven’t in many years. Is it time to move, or even replace them? Ditch the sentimentality, unless it’s a very special plant, and use the newly-created space to plant something new and exciting. Garden centres will be filling up with all kinds of great choices very shortly.
