Spring Garden Tips and Tasks

Spring 2008- Vol. 21 No.1

Get your cold crops planted now.  This includes sweet peas.  Soak the seeds overnight in warm water.  Sow them directly into the soil.  We carry Renee’s Seeds and she has some really fragrant varieties you may want to try.  You can also grow sweet peas in a large pot with a makeshift trellis for them to climb.
  
Spring is the best time to line out rhubarb, asparagus and strawberries.  Rhubarb is such an ugly looking root that you would never believe it could produce a thing but stick it in good fertile garden soil and one root will produce enough stalks to feed a family.  Strawberries are sold in the spring in bundles of 10 plants.  Prepare your site, open the bundle and line them out at about a foot distance apart.  Pick off the berries the first year as soon as they appear to allow for better root growth.  Next year you can allow the berries to ripen.  Asparagus is also sold in bulk bareroot.
  
After you have raked out your perennial garden examine it closely for ‘volunteers’ or overzealous spreaders.  Fall blooming anemones are famous for wandering throughout the garden. Using a garden fork or spade dig up the offshoots and give them away or relocate them in another area.  Often senior centers, schools and daycares are looking for plant donations for their spring benefit plant sale.  (Vergennes library has a benefit plant sale in late May and the Monkton library holds theirs’ in late June).  Donating extra plants is a great way to help out your community and clean up your garden at the same time.
  
Water! Water! Water! All your trees and shrubs that were planted last year, especially last fall are dependent on spring rains to get their roots going this season.  We have not had enough rain this spring.  Big trees especially need water as they put out new root growth.  Give them big, deep drinks with the hose placed at the drip line of the branches.
  
Seeds are in and while it is too soon to plant some things it is a good time to get the seed.  Many summer flowers and some vegetables prefer to be started directly in the ground where they are to grow.  I find this to be especially true of tall flowers like cut and come again zinnias and sunflowers.  Other plants to direct seed would be: cornflowers, larkspur, nigella, scabiosa and most annual vines like morning glories.
  
Some shrubs can be pruned now.  The summer blooming spireas Anthony Waterer and Neon Flash can be cut back to about a foot.  They will keep them from sprawling and getting leggy and they will still bloom when you want them to.  Forsythia is just about finished its spring show (and it was a stunning one this year).  If you want to reduce the height of your shrub do so as soon as it is finished blooming.   Cut the plant back lower than your desired height and let it gracefully get there.  The secret to good shrub pruning is that a month after you are done no one should be able to tell.
  
Remember as you mulch the plantings around your yard to keep it light.  I have visited some job sites where the customer was concerned that their trees were not doing well only to see that over the years so much mulch had been piled on around the base that the roots were smothering.  Ever so often rake off some of the old mulch before you top dress with fresh in the spring.  Always be sure your mulch is not up against the trunk of the tree as this will also smother the tree.
  
Finally, start visiting public display gardens to see what is missing in yours.  Bring along a camera and a notebook and always try to get the botanical name for a plant that you hope to acquire.