Garden Talk: Early Spring Means More Opportunities to Brighten Garden

Spring has been going from cold to rainy the past few years, and we never get an nice early stretch of weather to take care of necessary appearance needs. But we certainly did this year.

If you are like us here at you took advantage of the Indian Summer weather this March and did some maintenance and repairs. Everything has a fun fresh coat of cheery yellow paint, and now we are ready for spring!!

But what next? What should you be thinking about right now to prepare your garden? A few ideas:

1. Start by taking a walk in your yard. Get a game plan by trying to remember where you thought you needed color and which plants need to be fed or pruned.

2. Be careful not to prune any plant that blooms in early spring. You will be pruning off the flower buds.

3. If you have always wanted to start seeds on your own, whether for flowers or veggies, there is still plenty of time. You can start anything from seeds indoors now, including tomatoes, peppers, and flowers. Just rememeber to note when they can go outside. 

4. Cold-tolerant veggie seedlings are also available to plant now. Examples are rhubarb, asparagus, broccoli, lettuce, cabbbage, collards, kohlrabi and cauliflower. Just have a light cloth row covering such as Harvest Guard to toss over when the weather is calling for frost.

It is also a great time to get some berries in ... blueberries, gooseberries, raspberries, currants, etc.

If you have never tried growing them before, you should! Even if you do not have an official vegetable garden, try planting a few in pockets between your flowers and shrubs or in some pots. They will never notice they are not in an official vegetable garden bed.  Just keep them in mind if you spray or feed. 

5. One thing to get done now is apply organic corn gluten to your lawn while the forsythia are in bloom to help prevent the weeds this year.

Got any questions on planning and starting your lawn or garden? Your best source of info is any local nursery. The North Hills is fortunate to have a lot of well-established great family-run nurseries with experienced gardeners on staff. 

Garden Talk is a weekly column by Laurie Curl, of . Got questions about your garden needs? Email them to Laurie at hahnnursery@aol.com and she'll answer them each week!