Preparing the Garden for Spring--in Winter
Even though we are in the throes of winter, a gardener's fancy turns to the possibilities that the warmer months offer. The ground may be covered in ice and snow (or, in my area, cold soggy mud), but we as gardeners can set the stage for a welcome splash of color come springtime. Hence, here is my top ten list for preparing the spring garden during these colder months:
1. Clean up the asparagus bed. Weed, mulch, and fertilize asparagus plants.
2. Perform a soil test.
3. Add organic amendments to the soil and allow them to break down during the next six to eight weeks or so. I will be working in blood meal, bone meal, wood ashes, and rabbit pellets made of alfalfa (the pellets will be moistened so that they break down without attracting rabbits) into the soil.
4. Peruse the gardening catalogs with delight.
5. Create a new garden plan for the existing main garden.
6. Create new garden space and start building up the fertility.
7. Have a new planter box created; this one will be for strawberries. Planter boxes have become a welcome birthday tradition during the past several years.
8. Weed, feed, prune, and mulch the blueberry plants; they inhabit one of the planter boxes mentioned above.
9. Look over the existing herbs and decide which new herbs to buy. Mint and bay are but two herbs on my list.
10. Plant daylilies around the bases of several trees in the yard.
11. Okay, I could not resist one more item: dream fondly about this year's upcoming garden and its bounty.
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| By Patrick CharpiatPatrick.charpiat at fr.wikipedia [CC-BY-SA-2.0-fr (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/fr/deed.en) or CC-BY-SA-2.0-fr (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/fr/deed.en)], from Wikimedia Commons |
