Behind and Behinder

April 1st, 2014

   Those warm spells we’ve had in recent winters have been great for getting some spring yard jobs out of the way early.

The boxwoods are trimmed, and the liriope and hardy geraniums are clipped… a few jobs done.

   No such luck this year.

   I probably speak for all but the most crazed gardeners in admitting that I didn’t get a thing done this year until late March. No April fooling.

   Since then, it’s been a flurry of trimming, raking, pruning, perennial-cutting, vole-cursing and such. It reminds me of the folksy saying, “The faster I go, the behinder I get.”

   Judging from how plants have progressed in this cold late winter and early spring, we’re all at least a week – and maybe two – behind our usual happenings.

   I’d been getting used to seeing forsythia and Mellow Yellow® spireas blooming in late March, with daffodils and crocuses and helleborus adding to the chorus (a helleborus-chorus?)

   We’ll catch up. All it took was a couple of 50-degree days on March 21-22 to encourage even the tulips to poke up their leafy heads.

   Everything will get around to emerging and blooming, even though the timing might be on the back end of normal for a change. That’s assuming the cold winter just browned our landscape plants and didn’t actually kill off much.

   To help you whip things into shape in your yard, here’s what I’ve been up to:

   * Trimmed the boxwoods, hollies and falsecypresses. The boxwoods in particular had some tip-burning from the winter wind. They’ll be fine once new leaf buds push out.

   * Shored up a few sagging arborvitae. This happened to a lot of arbs under the heavy snow and ice loads we had back in January. Mine had fairly minor splaying that I fixed by bundling back together with wide bands. People with severe sags on big arborvitae aren’t going to be so lucky.

   * Pruned the dwarf butterfly bushes, tree-type hydrangeas (Hydrangea paniculata Pinky Winky® and Vanilla Strawberry™), ‘Knock Out’ roses, St. Johnswort and beautyberry. These are all plants that will flower on new wood, meaning heading into the season is the time to cut them.

   * Clipped the browned-out foliage from perennials that I let alone heading into winter. These include salvia, coreopsis, hardy geraniums, catmint, iris, ornamental grasses, liriope, mums, sedum and barrenwort. The clippings go onto my compost pile.

   * Raked off the browned-out foliage of hostas, daylilies, sweet woodruff and leadwort.

   * Raked the leaves off of semi-evergreen perennials and groundcovers, including helleborus, coralbells, foamflowers, foamybells, lamium, creeping sedum and ajuga.

   * “Hardened off” the cabbage, broccoli, onion, leek, lettuce and cauliflower seedlings that I started inside in February. Hardening involves setting the plants outside gradually in increasing light and wind exposure over about 10 days before planting.

Filling a Wall ‘o Water with water to insulate the early tomatoes.

   * Got out a couple of Wall ‘o Water plant protectors, filled the cylinders with water and set them in the garden to warm the soil inside. In a few days, I’ll plant two tomato plants – a cherry type and an early variety – that I also started inside in February. These usually give me my first ripe tomatoes by the end of June.

   * Muttered about all of the grass-patching I’ll be doing in another week or so from vole and grub damage. Muttering followed raking all of the dead grass off and dumping it into the compost pile, which is now overflowing.

   * Gathered up multiple plant tags that blew around the yard over winter. Tried to poke them back into the soil somewhere near the matching plants might be.

   * Smiled that the goldfish seemed to have survived a winter in which the pond froze over almost the entire time.

   * Chipped up two large piles of tree, rose and shrub prunings with one of the few gas-powered tools I own – a 6-horsepower chipper/shredder. The homemade mulch went directly on one my perennial gardens. It makes no sense to me to pay to have prunings hauled away, then turn around and pay to have someone else bring me a pile of wood mulch later.

   I haven’t even thought about edging or fertilizing yet. Come to think of it, while I’ve been writing this, I just got even more behinder…