We had a wonderful start to our 2016 garden year with a presentation from Sue Beebe, the Assistant director of Cornell Cooperative Extension in Ballston Spa. Many thanks to our President, Bonnie Desfosse, and her team who find these wonderful gems for us all to enjoy. Any of the presentation we hold at the Northville Public Library are open to the public and gives you a chance to learn something about our gardens and to meet with a great group of people and – refreshments! So keep an eye out in this magazine for dates and visit our website at visitsacandaga.com for details.
Sue’s presentation was on growing hydrangeas. We’re all used to the old fashioned (and still great) mop head hydrangeas but she showed us many new varieties and gave us tips on selecting them and taking care of them throughout the year. She’s very knowledgeable and it was a treat to learn from her experience. The hand out she gave us all is now part of my go to garden reference material.
March is a great time to prune the summer blooming shrubs. I say summer blooming because those bloom on new wood so you can prune back quite severely now and it won’t affect the blooms. When you prune think about the shape of your shrub and how you want it to fit into your landscape through the summer. Thin it out as more air circulation the better for the health of the shrub and try to work it so that your last cut ends above an outside facing bud so that the new growth will grow outwards not back into the middle. It is not time to prune lilacs, forsythia, azalea or rhododendrons as these are spring bloomers and pruning now will cut off the flowers. You can prune these, if you want and nothing says you have to, after bloom. A good rule of thumb for lilacs and forsythia is to remove one fourth of the oldest wood each year which keeps these plants on the shorter side but doesn’t impact the blooms.
If you didn’t clean up your garden last year then get a start on it now but watch that you don’t trample on the newly emerging bulbs. If you have a compost pile you need to take the brown gold and use that in your gardens for the spring before adding new material. If you have the space you can start a second pile or make a bin for this year’s stuff. An easy way to trim your big grasses is to wrap a string around them and take a serrated knife, or perhaps a chain saw, and cut below the string which you can then use to transport the grasses to your compost area. They will compost better if they are cut into small pieces first or you can use them as mulch in the vegie garden or flower garden. Check the bird houses too, don’t want those new little chickies getting sick because of some old material that got moldy.
Have you started any seeds inside yet? Towards the end of the month you can start the warm weather crops such as tomato, pepper and eggplant because they won’t go into the garden until the end of May but you can plant the brassicas now, cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage and Brussel sprouts. Since they can take the colder weather and after they are hardened off you can transplant them outside sometime in late April.
Indoors, all of your plants will enjoy a light feeding of fertilizer. You can use the granulated or a liquid at half strength. You may need to start watering a bit more frequently now that our days are staying longer. If you have some plants that need repotting now is the time to do it. Look at the bottom of the pot and if roots are coming out then slip the plant out of the pot and if the roots are all over the root ball it needs help. Cut off the tail of roots coming through the hole in the pot and try to loosen the roots around the root ball before potting it into a larger container filled with the same type of soil you had in the original pot. If you don’t have room for a larger container you can try to slice off some of the roots from all around the plant. After you report it you will need to watch the plant carefully, do not fertilize or over water and keep it out of direct sun until it recovers. It will help to reduce the foliage too. Check your Christmas Cactus, now is a good time to cut it back, you can break off the ‘leaves’ back as far as you want to go and two new ‘leaves’ will sprout from that point.
Now is the time to pot up the tuberous begonias, geraniums, cannas, dahlias and calla lilies you’d had stored over winter. Keep them in filtered bright light until new shoots start to arrive and gradually transition them to full sun.
March and April are wonderful times in the garden but we never know when we have 70 degree weather and then a frost so watch the weather, know your micro climes and dream of those wonderful flowers and fresh veggies.
Our next meeting is Wednesday, April 6 at 1:00 p.m. at the Northville Public Library when Janice Strevey of Rosewood Gardens will talk to us about David Austin fragrant English roses. You are all invited to come and join us.
As always if you want to know more or want to contact us the address is POBox 675, Northville.
