As the sun climbs higher and the days grow longer, gardeners get fidgety. We want to do something – anything–in the garden. We want to see if our earliest perennials are up yet.
Or we may become obsessed thinking of a plant we put in last year, wondering if it survived the winter. The urge to snoop around in the garden is powerful. And I say to you, dear gardener, don’t do it. The worst thing you can do is to go poking around your garden beds looking for signs of life. It is too early, and even if it were not, searching for plants by scraping and digging in the soil could easily damage the roots and possibly decapitate the plant you are seeking. Better to wait, those plants will nose their way through soon enough. To quote from ‘The Essential Earthman by Henry Mitchell, “Leave your plants alone.”
Hands Off
Leave your garden beds alone too. Do not cut back plant stalks, do not pull back the leaves and compost protecting the soil. Do not walk out there at all, if you can help it; walking on frozen sod is damaging to lawns. When the weather begins to warm, do not work the soil if it is wet. Squeeze a handful, if it crumbles then it is workable. If it compresses, it is too wet.
Previous Columns
- Garden Gems: Some tips to help keep your houseplants happy
- Garden Gems: My Gift List for the Gardener in Your Life
If you feel you must pull back mulch and tidy up your perennial beds, you should wait for consistently warmer temperatures (one week of 50 degree weather) before you do so. The 50-degree guideline gives overwintering creatures the time to wake up, a chance to emerge from eggs or cocoons after a winter of slumber in your garden. This year, try simply leaving the mulch in place. Perennials are accustomed to pushing up through leaf litter, they are stronger than you think. That layer of compost or leaf litter protects the garden from temperature swings and enriches the soil.
Things You Can Do
What can you do now? Pruning evergreens is a good late winter activity. Now is also a good time to prune summer-flowering shrubs such as Rose of Sharon and Hydrangea paniculata. Spring-flowering shrubs—forsythia, azalea, rhododendron, lilac—bloom on old wood, wait to prune them until just after they bloom.
Now is the time to start summer flowering tubers—cannas, dahlias, and caladiums—that you have overwintered. Ditto tuberous begonias (plant them with the hollow side facing upward). When you first spy your peonies emerging, set peony cages around them. If you are gearing up for a vegetable garden, early March is the time to start seeds of leeks, lettuces, parsley, broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower indoors. Wait on tomato seeds until the end of March.
Take stock of your garden. How does it look now, with the trees bare and the perennials asleep? What could you add for visual interest when the garden is at rest? Evergreens, hardscaping, and paths to improve access are all worth considering. Let me ask you this: do you have a place to sit and simply enjoy your garden? One thing is absolutely true about seating in the garden, it just looks inviting. Here, a bench seems to call, come sit, take a moment and share the garden with me.
