![]() ![]() I’ll then place a tarp over the bed for 2 weeks to kill off the weeds. I prefer to broadfork the soil, then water it and allow weed seeds to germinate. Aerating your soil is important, but whenever you disturb the soil it brings weed seeds to the surface to germinate. Compost your garden! “When preparing the soil in the spring, some gardeners will till or use a broadfork to loosen and aerate the soil.Prune perennials before new growth appears.Shrubs and perennials available at garden stores can also be planted outside.Plant bare root plants like fruit trees, roses and asparagus.That can be hard as we see warmer winters, but mid-March is a good time in our climate to start the spring clean in the garden.” “A rule of thumb for when to clean up in spring to avoid disturbing beneficial insects is when the daytime temperatures are consistently about 50 degrees. Prepare your soil: clean up any dead debris and add compost.Herbs: Basil, chives, dill, mint, thyme.Flowers: Anemones, asters, clematis, cosmos, gardenias, marigolds, nasturtium, zinnias.Veg: beets, broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, cabbages, tomatoes and peppers are good to start in seed trays.Indoor planting season is here! Start your transplants:.Update your garden journal or calendar for future reference.So are the hollow stems of perennial flowers and shrubs, so when pruning in the fall or winter, I encourage people to leave at least 18 inches of the dead stalk as habitat for beneficial insect larvae." 'Leave the leaves!' is a popular saying, because they are an important habitat for beneficial insects. “I like to encourage people to rake the leaves out of their lawn, but leave them on their property as mulch in their garden beds or around the bases of trees. Rake up leaves and clean up dead parts of plants, pruning spent flowers.Turn your compost pile (or start one!) “Most people turn their pile every two weeks or even once a month.".If you’ve got the bug and are looking to start something today, here’s our handy, quick guide checklist for the year to help you start and keep a garden you can be proud of. It also means that some cooler weather garden plants (like beets, broccoli and carrots) can be planted out as early as February, and that reblooming plants (like those zinnias we count on for the years we aren’t as prepared!) will produce all the way through the first frost in October or November. Our winters are generally pretty mellow with lowest temperatures not sticking around for long enough stretches to kill everything off, and our summers are relatively mild and damp. ![]() The great news is that our zone is a pretty friendly place for plants. (See her advice in our checklist in green.)įirst of all, know your zone! Roanoke is in Zone 7, meaning the USDA classified hardiness zone that tells us what categories of plants are capable of growing according to our climate. So this year I’ve consulted with the experts, including LEAP’s Community Gardens Manager, Hannah Patrick. Having the enthusiasm but lacking a plan (and, you know, general knowledge about gardening) is often what gets me into trouble. It’s suddenly late June and you’re haphazardly spreading a packet of zinnia seeds too close together onto some hastily cleared soil and hoping for the best. It’ll be easy!”īut then, after a weekend spending an unbelievable amount of money on seed packets and little wooden stake labels and slabs of dense, stinky mulch, the project seems to stall out. “A vertical squash trellis,” you tell your family, “is just what we need this summer. Your Pinterest newsfeed is suddenly a sea of trellis blueprints and companion garden illustrations, projects like green bean tents that, until twelve minutes prior you’d never heard of but for which you now feel a great, ferocious passion. If you’re anything like me, you might be gripped with the desire to finally really go for it in your garden – this is the year, you tell yourself, when you’ll actually start that vegetable patch. And with it comes the fever: to clean house, to start a garden or just to dust off those long winter blues and get outside in the sunshine. When the days start to lengthen and the temperatures inch up along with the first of the crocuses and the grape hyacinths, you know spring is here. ![]()
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