February – Dealing with Ice
Try using birdseed or sand on ice instead of harsh melting chemicals or salts that can damage concrete, mortar and plantings. If you must use chemicals or salt use them sparingly and follow the directions on the labels.
March – Pruning Roses
March is the month to prune your Roses. As you prune your Roses, place a drop of Elmer’s Glue into the hole at the pruning site to prevent insects from entering the stem. While the Forsythia bloom is the ideal time.
April – Prune Crepe Myrtle
April is a good time to prune down Crepe Myrtle trees / shrubs in order to promote new growth because the summertime flowers are borne onto new plant growth.
May – Annuals
During the month of May it is usually safe to put out flowering annuals and tropical indoor plants for the summer season. Typically Mothers Day is the date with which we are sure there will be no more late frost but remember, mothers day is early this year so be ready to cover up any tender or unprotected plants just in case.
The traditional Big Leaf Hydrangea has leafed out now. You can detect which stems and stem tips are dead that can be removed. Prune very carefully if at all. Flowers on this species are borne on 2 year old tissue and too much pruning will result in little to no flowers. The colors of these flowers are determined, and can be altered by, acidity levels in the soil even with new cultivars of red and blue.
Another traditional shrub, the Rhododendron, will be flowering soon. After flower it is helpful to pinch off the spent blossoms. In doing so you will eliminate the shrubs effort and energy to form seeds, enabling it to be more focused on flower bud production for next year.
May – Prune Crepe Myrtle
May is a good time to prune down Crepe Myrtle trees / shrubs in order to promote new growth because the summertime flowers are borne onto new plant growth.
Our area is 4″ behind in rainfall so be sure to water new and valuable plantings.
June – Watering
With summer approaching it will soon be time to break out the sprinklers. Watering correctly is not as easy as it seems. Newly planted trees, shrubs and lawns that should have been getting daily and light waterings during spring should now have their schedules change to less frequency and more water volume. The idea being to have new roots follow the water down deep into the soils. Watering too often and too shallowly can actually do harm to plants by keeping their roots too near the surface where the water is. Here they can become burned and dried out when the water ceases. Depending on your type of sprinkler or system a weekly soaking for close to an hour is necessary for established plantings when there is no rain. Early morning is the best time to water. Later in the day you can lose a lot of your water to evaporation. Too late in the afternoon and you will invite bacterial and fungal problems onto foliage that cannot dry out before nightfall. Not to mention mosquitoes.
July – Water Trees and Shrubs
Be sure to water the trees and shrubs. Lawns are less expensively replaced.
August – Weeds
The weeds are doing very well right now with the absence of any good soaking rains. Most importantly it is necessary to interrupt the weed plant’s reproductive cycle of flowering and then producing seeds. There are annual weeds for each and every season of the year, in addition to perennial weeds. Thus it is an ongoing battle throughout the year, keeping them to a minimum. The general rule is to remove them as soon as you see them because many of them do not need much time to put up their flowers and then drop their seeds. And the longer they remain the more difficult they can be to remove as they send their roots deeper into the soil. Some weeds actually reproduce underground via their root systems.
After clearing the weeds it is a great time to lay down mulches to smother and discourage any weed seeds from trying to germinate.
November – Bulbs
Get the last of your bulbs and plants in before its too late. And water them through the end of the year. Plant pansies for autumn and early spring color. Protect deer favored plants from deer damage with netting. Protect young tree trunks also from deer rubbing and marking of territory.
December
Continue to water newly planted evergreens while temperatures permit. Compost your leaves. They are nature’s mulch. Shred them to help them break down into organic soil amendments faster.
June – Weeds
As noted in my spring letter weeds are proving to be more troublesome than usual this year due to the mild winter. Remember it is most important to break up the reproductive cycle by getting rid of them before they go to seed.
October – Weeds
Fall is here and it is time to walk around your property monitoring gutters, downspouts, drain lines and grading. This is the best way to make sure water is running away from your foundations and not lingering there, finding a way toward your basements. Even with no signs of water inside, moisture can be lurking behind walls of finished basements in particular. And that can lead to mold and mildew, not to mention related allergies.
At the same walk, look at your garden for insect damage and weed populations. With the mild winter both bugs and weeds are doing very well this year.
Please also look for standing water areas that might breed mosquitoes.
See the Autumn Newsletter regarding planting procedures.
With another mild winter behind us there will be many weeds (and bugs) that did not get killed off naturally, so be on the lookout for them. Pull weeds before they can go to seed for next year’s population. The better you can interrupt the reproduction cycle, the less time and money can be spent on fighting the weed battle.
See our Spring Newsletter for more information.
