It’s the spring equinox! Today will be cooler than yesterday, but spring is in the air. Annual pansies will keep blooming if protected from a frost overnight. Frost doesn’t kill the pansy plant, but flowers will turn brown around the edges. Luckily, new buds will emerge and you can enjoy weeks of blooms.
Now that the snow has melted, we have mud and rain to enjoy. Hooray! Keep that rainwater handy for when we get a string of dry days. Collecting rainwater can be as simple as rigging a rain chain off a roofline corner and into a 32-gallon garbage can. You can also direct downspouts into those cans or more elaborate rain barrels fitted with screens and spigots. After last fall’s stretch of dry weather, capturing rainwater whenever possible seems like a good idea.
Dark soils absorb more heat than light soils, and fertile soils stay warm longer, probably due to all the healthy microbial activity. Add compost to the surface of flower and vegetable gardens before planting. The added compost enriches your soil with organic matter that feeds the soil organisms and facilitates plant root access to important soil nutrients, like nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, plus dozens of other micronutrients.
Soils in raised beds drain faster and will be ready to plant sooner than typical vegetable rows on the ground. I didn’t think the vegetable garden soil would be ready for planting peas two weeks ago, but I was wrong! Vegetable garden soils are ready to be “worked” when a handful of soil holds together without oozing water and the clump also crumbles apart easily.
By next weekend, I will have sowed pea, carrot, and some lettuce seeds outdoors. Too much wet weather can rot the pea seeds. If pea seedlings don’t emerge after about 10 days, I will plant some more. Carrot seeds tend to germinate slowly. A common strategy to keep impatient gardeners calm is to plant radish seeds along the row of carrots. Radish will germinate quickly and be ready to pick in a month—just about the time the carrot seedlings start to show. Radishes mark the carrot row, and you can harvest the radishes without disturbing the tiny carrot roots.
Another treat for this impatient gardener: Last year’s abandoned scallions have re-sprouted! A freeze kept me from harvesting a few scallion plants last November. By keeping a few to overwinter, I will have fresh, homegrown scallions very soon.
With snow and ice gone, the vole highways have appeared! Voles (a type of meadow mouse) create runs under the snow that take them from one borough to another while staying hidden from watchful hawks. Foxes will also pounce on the creatures when they hear them moving under the ice. Trails through the lawn have appeared. Now exposed, the highways will be abandoned. You can rake the paths away and level the ground surface if necessary.
However, some trails will lead directly to some damaged plant stems. Voles dug under a cotoneaster over the winter and scraped away at the bark of numerous stems and probably shared budding branches with the larger rabbits roaming the area. My cotoneaster can handle this annual pruning, and I just cut back some of the longer stems from last year to reshape the shrub. I also had to replant an iris tuber that my dog removed while trying to get at the voles.
The voles have left this hole for now. I will refill the hole with topsoil amended with some granular repellent to keep them away.
Early spring is a great time to plant potted trees and shrubs. We are at the beginning of the growing season. Plants naturally send energy to stems and buds to start photosynthesis while sunlight becomes more and more available. With the leaf growth, trees quickly establish root systems. Now is a perfect time to plan a hedge around areas or objects in the yard that you prefer hidden. Use some fast-growing evergreens for an immediate effect, but also mix in some flowering or native fruiting choices. All will provide birds and pollinators with food and refuge.
Remember, as you head out to start your garden chores, ticks are awake! Spray your garden clothes with DEET products and quickly change out of them when you return indoors, depositing the clothes in a laundry basket immediately. If spotted moving along your skin, capture it with a piece of tape and seal it by folding the tape over it before putting it in your trash.
Have more questions on pollinator gardens, summer bulbs, or ticks? How about Hydrangeas (who doesn’t?), best garden tools, spring ephemerals, container gardening, or the best heirloom tomatoes? Spend time with more gardeners like yourself at a Western Massachusetts Master Gardener Symposium. There are three coming up: March 22 in South Deerfield, March 29 in Westfield, and one on April 5 in Lenox. Learn more and register here.
I call myself the Lazy Berkshire Gardener because I don’t want to work too hard in my gardens. I want to enjoy them. I find it easier to observe my landscape and let the compost happen, the water pool up, or daisies to self-sow. I look for ways to do the minimum task for the biggest impact. For example, mulching is better than spraying and much better than weeding all season. I look for beautiful, low-maintenance plants that thrive in or at least tolerate my garden conditions. Plus, I am willing to live with the consequences if I miss something.
