Spring is almost here and now is the time to start planning. Where do you even begin?! Sometimes our yards can feel overwhelming but taken in small steps and with a plan, your yard and garden is easily manageable. The best part is, if you can't get to your gardens right away, that's okay! The pollinators will appreciate you waiting to clean your yards up until at least late April, but we know it can be hard to wait that long.
Ask yourself what you want to do this season. Do you want to expand your gardens? Maintain what you have? Become more pollinator and native friendly?
Whatever you want to do, having a plan in place is always best. Break your plan down into smaller steps:
Start with cleaning up any existing gardens, this can include hedgerows, tree circles and the like. Cut back any dead foliage, rake out debris, weed if any have started to come up and check your edges. Has the lawn or wood line started creeping into your garden? Pull or clip what you can to keep your garden clear and consider using a half-moon edger to cut a clean edge you can also add decorative edging which come in an endless variety, especially if you use natural items like rocks interesting logs or branches. But be sure to wait on any items like edging and digging until the soil is "workable," meaning it is not soaked and cold. Generally starting sometime in April is ideal, at least for Southern Vermont Zone 5a/b.
Prune any bushes, shrubs, trees or woody perennials that have dead or broken branches. Be sure to check the ideal pruning time for each plant. Some need to be pruned while dormant in the winter such as most of our fruit trees, or some need to be pruned directly after blooming like lilacs or rhododendrons.
Wait until the growing season has begun to see if you need to fill in any spots where plants may have died. Consider what happened before planting again- was the plant not suited to the growing conditions, perhaps it was a particularly hot year, or you have a critter that made a meal of the plant. Gardening is a learning experience: you learn just as much from what goes wrong as you do from what goes right. Don't be afraid to fail! Take what happened and research the causes. Use reputable resources such as your local extension office (UVM for Vermont, UNH for New Hampshire, and so on)
Are you adding gardens this year? Draw out a few ideas to see what works best. The beautiful thing about gardens is they are always changing and can always be changed. Nothing is set in stone in a garden (unless of course you have large rocks!) and can generally be easily rearranged, removed, and added to as much or as little as you like. Your drawings don't have to be detailed, just enough to help you visualize the space better
Remember, if you are doing this by yourself, make sure you take into consideration how neat you want your gardens, and how much time you have to dedicate to weeding, trimming, deadheading and watering your gardens. Gardening can quickly become a chore rather then a delightful pastime if you stretch yourself too thin, so start small and expand as you go.
Some additional notes about cleaning up:
Cleaning up your gardens is usually the first step for a gardener in the spring. Remove any debris that was leftover from the fall and that accumulated during the winter - leaves, sticks, plant material, and sometimes trash or the odd baseball too. Cut back any dead branches on your trees, shrubs, or bushes. DO NOT prune most spring blooming trees, shrubs or bushes, you will lose all your blooms. Wait until they are past flowering to prune. You can cut back old wood now on any plants, such as some hydrangea varieties, that bloom on new wood.
Leaving dead stems up or piles of plant debris until even May has many benefits. As the materials break down, it contributes healthy organic material to your soil. More importantly, most of our native bee species, and other beneficial bugs, depend on dead plant material to survive the winter and to produce the next generation of offspring by nesting or laying in the stems of dead plants, or in/under piles of debris. This is an extensive subject that is closely connected with native gardening, pollinator friendly practices and much more. By waiting to clean up your yard and gardens, you are directly helping our native species with the minimum effort needed.
As you cleanup, gather the debris and leave it somewhere to break down. This could be as easy as a pile you set out of the way, perhaps near the edge of the woods, a back corner of your yard or a more traditional composter. Remember, if it is still early spring (March-April), try to leave as much of the material whole as possible, there are probably critters inside those stems waiting to emerge!
What can I Do NOW?
Spring fever can have you getting antsy, we know we are. So what can you do to scratch that itch now while the weather is still fairly cold and unpredictable?
Prune your fruit trees while they are still dormant and before they begin their spring growth (although with the weather this winter, most of our trees are already budding out)
Order seeds and spring planted bulbs - Hello dahlias and ranunculus we're looking at you!
Start your tomato, pepper, eggplant and other long season heat loving plants
The winter is quiet but it's the dreamin' season for gardeners. Get out your seed catalogs, scour Pinterest for ideas, and just hunker down while we wait for the warmer months to get here!
See you in the gardens!
-Danielle
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