We offer four (4) seasons gardening appointments and all our regular ongoing clients receive these gardening visits in the spring, summer, fall and winter.
Today, we will cover the early spring garden bed preparation.
Early SPRING – March/April
March and April Spring includes tidying up after the winter season. Most garden beds are full of debris from falling branches and limbs, crinkled up, leftover fall leaves and….new spring “weeds.” The wind in Virginia in March begins to pick up tiny seedlings from the weeds and begins carrying them everywhere. It doesn’t take much and they blow around and begin populating and spreading pretty rapidly, and very early in the season. The best time to pull them is following a good rain. Then you can pull the weed and it’s root. Make sure to place them in a paper refuse bag for disposal. Tossing them aside will encourage them to root elsewhere, and then the cycle continues. Our next task is to remove dead growth from under and around bushes and plantings. Cleaning/clearing them out from your plants sends a signal to your bushes and plantings that they can now begin new spring growth. Next we deep edge all the garden beds, creating a deep trench to provide a tidy look and to allow rain water to drain without causing stagnation. If Pansies planted in the fall need deadheading of spent blossoms we provide this during our upkeep. We take care of this along with the trimming of all rose bushes and any other winter bloomers such as Lenten Rose and Primroses. We also cut down the Mums left from fall. As soon as you do this you will see that they begin shooting up little green life, and the fall cycle of life begins to repeat itself. Hydrangeas at this point are just beginning to bud. If any branches are absent green buds and look lifeless, you can now trim these stalks down to the ground. They don’t grow back until the next season, but cutting them in the spring will assure new growth as soon as temps start to break the next year. Spring is a perfect time to remove any leaf debris from near the roots of all bushes such as Rose bushes, Azaleas and Camellias. Same is true for Nandina, Forsythia and Evergreens. Tidying in and under all bushes in the spring allows rain water to be able to access their roots bringing new growth to each plant from the center near the ground. Use a hand 3-claw fork to till and turn the soil in your garden beds. As you are doing this, you can dig deep and in and under any weeds. It works so well. And if you mulched your beds in the previous fall, before the winter arrived, you can spread the mulch around more evenly, and this gives your spring beds such a fresh look. Mulch has a tendency to mat itself down during the winter, and tilling the beds actually releases it and allows fresh nutrients and air to give new life to the earth under and around your plants. It’s kind of like adding spices to a recipe. Thoroughly mixed in, it gives a new growth spurt to everything. In the end, it looks fresh, tidy and fantastic. It’s an accomplished feeling, to have your beds really ready for the first week in May. In Virginia we are Zone 9, so the “new plantings” protocol date is Mother’s Day. All the prep we just covered makes your garden so ready to plant your spring flowers…….!
“Contessa” says….. it a very good thing, and you will be thrilled you are…ready!
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