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Drive through any suburb on the first Saturday in May and you’re likely to see panicky homeowners in every other yard trying to accomplish a hundred chores at once as they “prepare for spring.” They’ll be pruning fruit trees and digging up their vegetable gardens with tools unrepaired and unsharpened from last fall, while planting new shrubs and flowers, and bemoaning the condition of their lawns all at the same time. Let’s face it; if they’re into May, it’s too late to adequately prepare for Spring unless they have a battery of lawn assistants or warped teen-agers ready to help!
What will happen almost for certain is that half the newly purchased plants and shrubs will dry out and die before they make it into the ground, the nursery will be out of lawn fertilizer because they’re sold out, and the tools will end up repaired with electrical tape or break so badly our hurried gardeners will have to borrow yours! Tomorrow they’ll ache all over from their marathon yard work, detesting every minute and wishing for winter.
Don’t let this panic attack you! Using the Scout motto, be prepared for your spring clean-up by digging into it in late winter, or by the end of March for sure. Do a little at a time, in the following or similar order, and you’ll be ready by the first weekend in May to enjoy a round of golf or the local garden shop’s sale, with your place already tidied up and blooming!
First, be kind to your tools and they’ll work for you. If you failed to clean, sharpen if necessary and store your tools in sand drenched with clean motor oil (to keep them rust free) in the fall, the first chore is to locate them, clean and sharpen the ones that need it. Check handles for cracks or breaks, (it will probably be less expensive to buy a replacement than to replace handle inthis mechanized age), oil moving parts, have motorized tools like mowers and trimmers are serviced, and make a resolution to tend to your tools come next November, when you have more time to do things like oil wooden handles and store tools carefully after they are sharpened and repaired.
Next, before trees and shrubs bud out, tend to their pruning. Fruit trees should have much of their mid-growth pruned away with sharp pruners or a pruning saw, so that sun can get into the fruit and ripen it. When pruning shrubs like euonymous, forsythia and rhododendron, don’t just run a hedge trimmer uniformly overall. You’ll end up with lots of dead wood and a top few inches of leaf and flower. Instead, Greenwood’s The New Gardener manual suggests you do 3-step shrub pruning: cut any dead, diseased or damaged wood back to healthy growth; remove up to one-fifth of older wood, cutting it back to within a few inches of the ground; prune out any spindly, crossing or weak growth to just above ground level, and then let nature takes its course. If you want to nip of a few gangly branches here and there, don’t just take branch tips—remove the whole branch from the base of the shrub.
Third, have your fun with seed and plant catalogues or at the local nursery, and take the first days of spring to order seeds and plants for later planting. Start most perennial and annual flower seeds a good six-to-eight weeks before the average date of last frost, and tomatoes, peppers and other hot weather vegetable seeds then, too. Cabbage family plants and most lettuces are frost hardy and can be started even earlier, and be ready to transplant by May 10. Do not take delivery of shrubs or flower plants until you know it’s safe to get them into the ground at once. Storing such plants as strawberries, herbs and others can be a nuisance, and risky; let the grower take the risks. You still have much to do.
Now that seed and plant orders are in, you have the motivation to clean-up the fall and winter debris diligently. Rake leaves and branches out of flower beds and along walkways. Rake the lawn for leftover leaves and twigs from winter storms. Sweep up walks, steps and driveways and make mental note of tasks to be tended in the next category.
Fix-up, paint-up always comes in spring, and can refer to portions of your dwelling itself. But here we refer to maintaining garden structures like sheds, arbors, trellises, decks and lawn furniture—in other words, your “summer home.” We failed to bring in our trumpet vine trellis when the vine died back last fall, and winter did a job on it. It will need renailing in places, a good sanding and a coat of outdoor polyurethane. Our new patio lifted a tiny bit in one corner, and we’ll be repairing that winter damage before the heavy planting season is upon us. The lawn furniture always needs sprucing up, and it will be delightful to have a comfy chair to loll around in while we take our time through the next half-dozen chores.
Next, walk around your lawn on a dry day and assess it for winter damage and signs of pests, moles, crabgrass, etc. If you haven’t had your soil tested in years, leave enough time to send a sample to your local agricultural testing bureau. Purchase lawn maintenance supplies early, get the manufacturer’s directions clear, and tend to this chore on a day or two between April showers, if possible.
By now your seeds started indoors are probably ready to transplant to peat pots or other pots, and gradually harden off in a cold frame or sunny back porch. Introduce them to the great outdoors gradually, perhaps a few hours at a time in the shade for a few days, then into a spot that can be covered at night with glass set on a wooden framework. Make sure they are fed generously when set out, and keep them watered, but not overly watered, or their roots will get lazy. The care you give them now ill pay off in the blooming season, and your plants will not suffer the setback they would have if you bought them from a household department store nursery, where they go from greenhouse to wind, hot sun and torrential rain in a wisp of time.
Now’s the time to seriously tend your planting beds beyond the pruning and raking out. Pull back last year’s mulch from plants and fertilize appropriately, rake the mulch back and add new mulch where necessary. We find this job is worth doing well to eliminate the need for incessant weeding during the hot weather. While you’re in the flower beds, visualize what additional plants you may need, beyond what you have thriving in your cold frame, and go for it before the nurseries run out.
Next is the Herculean chore of tilling, raking and otherwise digging up your vegetable and cut flower garden. Lime and fertilize it, if your soil test indicates those needs. Prepare beds for plants and seeds, making sure you have enough organic matter for loose, loamy soil. We use an automatic tiller for our gigantic (one acre) garden, but if your patch is small, double digging with a nice sharp spade and breaking up clods of earth, then raking out large stones should do the trick. Approach the work without hurrying, remember to use your knees and stand close to your shovel. If you enjoy gardening books, Jeff Taylor’s Tools of the Earth is en enjoyable treatise on the delights of using good tools in the garden. “…shoveling in a garden is sweat in the service of the sacred,” he says. Maybe his philosophy can lighten your load.
Finally, plant your garden. Start in the vegetable patch with lettuce, onions, cabbage and broccoli plants, and carrots, beets, chard and spinach, which do fine from seed, then move to early flowers like pansy and marigold plants, then flower seeds of every kind. Next, if the soil is warm enough, plant beans, corn and finally the nightshades, tomatoes, peppers and eggplants and tender vine plants like zucchini. All this planting should never be done on one weekend. Spread it out over a period of five or six weeks from April to June. Enjoy the rest of your well-maintained yard in the meantime, and steel yourself for the weeds!
Here is a handy summary of your prioritized garden tasks for spring. Save the list and modify for your particular needs as a guide for next season—which begins, remember, in the fall with tool preparation!
1-Repair and Clean Tools
2-Prune Trees and Shrubs
3-Start Seeds and Order Plants
4-Clean-Up Winter Debris
5-Fix-Up (Paint, Repair)
6-Lawn renovation-Soil Test
7-Cold Frame Planting
8-Planting Bed Maintenance: cultivate, feed, mulch
9-Dig Up and feed Vegetable and Flower garden
10-Plant Away and Wait for the Weeds
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