What to Do This Week in the Garden
-
- April
- 9
We run a weekly Do It Now column by Susan Henry on our Garden Page in the weekend Real Estate and Home section of the paper.
Now that the serious gardening season is finally upon us, I thought I’d begin to add it to my blog as well.
Susan, btw, has a great garden in Waccabuc that’s been part of the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days program for years. Her Open Day is usually in September.
Perennials
Continue dividing perennials. If the perennial bed was fertilized in the fall, there’s no need to do it now. The plants haven’t used the fall treatment yet. Compost is not fertilizer — it helps the plants take up the nutrients by maintaining tilth. Continue making notes of location of flowering bulbs and bloom time.
Flowers
These seeds can be started inside by now: ageratum, aster, calendula, hollyhock, lobelia, petunia, salvia, snapdragon, strawflower; black-eyed Susan vine. Zinnias and cosmos like to go directly in the ground after the last frost.
Fruits and vegetables
Practice crop rotation to discourage pests and diseases from taking hold. Tomato, pepper, eggplant, the cabbage family and melons, squash and cucumber should be rotated.
Trees and shrubs
Continue dormant oil spray. Check evergreens for winter damage. Plan to give forsythia a thorough pruning after bloom.
Lawns
When mowing begins, set mower blades to cut high — 2 inches for shady lawns — to encourage good grass rooting and discourage weed growth. If the lawn is mowed on schedule, the clippings will not need to be removed. They will decompose and return essential nitrogen to the lawn.
— Susan Henry, master gardener
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 at 2:02 pm by Bill Cary.
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Bill Cary grew up in Louisville, Ky. His gardening was limited to growing parsley and impatiens on the windowsill of Manhattan walkups until the mid-1990s when he bought a rundown old chicken farm on 8 acres in the Hudson Valley. Now he spends his weekends chasing deer, hacking away at invasive shrubs and vines and wondering why he doesn`t have more meadow and less lawn.
