Tag: 250403

Start slowly and save your back

By Henry Homeyer

[email protected]

It’s April, and spring has sprung. Or will soon. Winter always is a sneaky devil, coming back with hard frosts and even a foot of snow on occasion. There is much to do, but start slowly, not just for your back, which has been resting all winter, but because a week of warm sunny days doesn’t mean your soil is warm enough to plant. A soil thermometer pushed 3 inches into the soil should read 50 degrees before planting anything, even spinach and so-called cold-weather crops.

As you move around your garden you will probably notice that the soil is moist. If you are leaving footprints in the lawn or garden soil, stay off it until it dries out more. Otherwise you can ruin soil structure by compacting it.

You can put down 6-inch planks as walkways in flower beds if you are determined to weed or to remove leaves and debris while the soil is still a bit wet. But even then, be careful. There may be little green noses of perennials or bulbs lurking under the leaves and you won’t want to damage them by putting a plank on them.

I’ve had snowdrops up and blooming since March, as I do every year. By April I have lots of bulbs blooming: crocus, glory-of-the-snow, scilla or squill (a deep purple early bloomer), winter aconite (a bright yellow, short-stemmed beauty) and early daffodils. If you don’t have enough bulbs blooming, imagine where they might go, and put plant labels there for fall planting. A south-facing hillside bed will produce blossoms up to three weeks before a north-facing bed.

I plant 100 tulips as cut flowers every year. If you planted some last fall and have deer in the neighborhood, you may be disappointed to see them eaten just as they are starting to bloom. I prevent this by surrounding and covering my tulip bed with chicken wire before that happens. I plant my tulips in the vegetable garden each fall, and treat them as annuals.

Once your lawn has dried out, it will need a good raking to clean up the winter debris. I like to wait until the lawn has greened up a bit before raking. I don’t want to rake a dormant lawn as it would be easy to damage it with a brisk raking. Think of your lawn as individual plants growing very close together, not as one big green plant. They compete with each other and with crabgrass and weeds. A sprinkling of good compost will improve your soil, giving the lawn a better place to thrive.

I recommend reducing the size of most lawns. Think of a lawn as an area rug, not wall-to-wall carpeting. That will allow you to have a bigger vegetable garden and more places for native trees, shrubs and perennials that will support pollinators and birds. Do you know that caterpillars are essential food for baby birds? We need to provide flowers and trees that the butterflies and moths recognize and use — our natives.

I recommend raised beds for the vegetable garden, but you don’t have to build or buy wooden boxes for raised beds. When the soil has dried out, loosen it with a garden fork, and then use a short-tined rake to drag soil from walkways onto your designated beds to raise them up 6 inches or so. A 30-inch-wide bed is ideal — it’s wide enough for roots to spread far and wide, yet you will be able to reach all parts for weeding.

Adding compost to your soil every year will improve it greatly over time. An inch of compost works wonders if you do it every year. Buy it in bulk if you have access to a pickup truck, or buy bags if you don’t. And for my tomatoes? I always add a shovel of compost in every planting hole and stir it in well with my favorite weeding tool, the CobraHead weeder (cobrahead.com). Compost not only provides essential minerals in small quantities; it greatly improves soil texture and its ability to hold water in dry times.

Some people hate weeding, some love it. Either way, it has to be done. Start before the weeds get big. Perennial weeds like dandelions or thistles will already have deep roots. Annual weeds will be tiny but numerous. I believe the best tool for either is the CobraHead weeder. Its curved metal digging tip can loosen the soil around deep roots and help you pull from below with the tool while your other hand tugs on the top. Pull gently, slowly. You don’t want to snap off the root, as it will just start growing as soon as you walk away. Annual weeds you can loosen by scuffing the soil lightly.

As you plan your garden, think about buying organically certified starter plants and seeds. Why? Ordinary seed growers feed their plants with liquid fertilizer every day. That means that the plants don’t have to work as hard as organically raised plants to get the minerals they need. Organic practices promote longer roots to get the nutrition needed by the plants. If you are going to grow organic food, you will do best with organic starter plants.

Organic seed producers have to deliver seeds for plants that will not be protected from diseases and pests with chemicals. They have to be tough. Lastly, buying organic seeds and plants supports organic farmers. They are working hard to protect the environment by avoiding chemicals. Pay a little bit more if you can, and buy organic.

And remember: Gardening is supposed to be fun. Don’t work so hard you get blisters and a sore back. Garden a little every day.

Henry can be reached at [email protected] or PO Box 364, Cornish Flat, NH 03746.

Featured photo: Dandelions and other deep-rooted weeds pull best when soil is moist. Photo by Henry Homeyer.