Ready, Set, Garden – Practically

March 26th, 2013

   Now that we’re on the verge of another growing season (if winter ever decides to give up), I thought I’d share 10 of the most useful season-beginning, hands-on, work- and money-saving tips I’ve picked up over the years.

Colorful-leafed perennials are fair game for pots.

   1.) Scout out your emerging colorful-leafed perennials for possible use in pots. Divisions of things like coralbells, hostas, Japanese forestgrass and golden creeping jenny mean fewer pot annuals to buy. Return them to the ground in fall. Pick out annuals that match your perennials.

   2.) Standard advice for avoiding disease in flower pots is to clean pots each year, disinfect with a 10 percent diluted bleach solution and start with fresh soilless mix. Honestly, I’ve “cheated” and used the same potting mix two or three years running with the addition of maybe 10 percent homemade compost each spring, and I’ve never had disease problems. At least not yet…

   3.) Put together an extra pot or two to set in any garden spots left bare later in the season when something dies, gets eaten or goes dormant (bleeding heart, Virginia bluebells, spring bulbs, etc.)

   4.) Now’s the time to get your plant stakes and supports into place. It’s much easier to train summer floppers when they’re first emerging rather after they’re rambling all over the place.

   5.) Grasses still standing? Clear the way for new growth and streamline cleanup by tightly bundling their midsection first and then cutting. The whole bundled thing will topple like a tree, which you can then carry away instead of gathering up a pile of fallen blades.

Bundle your ornamental grasses before cutting.

   6.) Getting ready to fertilize or deal with weeds in the lawn? Fill that spreader over the driveway or other hard surface where you can clean up any spills. If you miss and dump a pile of granular fertilizer or weed-killer over the lawn, the concentrated load likely will brown out that patch. (Been there, done that.)

   7.) If mulching the whole property is getting to be too much every spring, try splitting the job – half the yard in spring and half at the end of the season.

   8.) Reduce mulching by underplanting trees and shrubs with low groundcovers, such as foamflowers, sweet woodruff and pachysandra in shade or creeping sedum, liriope or leadwort in sunnier spots. The living mat chokes out most weeds and saves work and mulch in the long run.

   9.) Try cutting out or cutting back on any “just-in-case” spraying you’re doing this year. You may be surprised at how little of it you actually need – or how much trouble beneficial insects clean up when you give them half a chance.

   10.) Don’t prune those early-blooming shrubs until after they flower (i.e. azaleas, forsythias, lilacs, weigelas, rhododendrons, etc.) Anything that blooms March through May formed its flower buds last year, so cutting now removes the flowers. It’s OK to prune later-blooming shrubs at the beginning of the season (butterfly bush, roses, caryopteris, summer-blooming hydrangeas, rose-of-sharon, etc.)