Late Spring Garden Chores
Saturday, June 1, 2013 @ 3:45 AM
Here are a few things that should keep you busy while waiting for the garden to reach it’s full potential :
> Pinch back candles on mugho pines.
Candles are the new growth spurs on the pine They should be trimmed back by ½ to ¾ depending on how compact you want the shrub to become. This needs to be done when the growth spurs are still soft and the needles have not formed yet. When it is done on time the trimmed candle will produce two or three new shoots where it was pinched back creating a compact, nicely shaped shrub. If it is left too late the pinched back candle will not produce new side shoots and if it is not done at all, the mugho pine will loose its shape.
> Look after the spring flowering bulbs.
By now, many of the spring flowering bulbs such as daffodils and tulips have finished blooming. If you want to have them bloom again next spring you need to remove the finished flowers so that they don’t form seed pods, and leave the remaining stems and foliage to die back naturally.
As the foliage yellows and dies above the ground the bulb underneath the ground is gathering and storing nutrients and forming next years flower. If the foliage is cut off before it dies, there will not be a flower next year. The foliage can be tied together to keep it looking neater, or better yet, it can be hidden by planting something tall in front of it.
> Keep up on the weeding.
This weather has been ideal for the weeds, especially in the vegetable garden. It is much easier to remove the weeds when they are small, then to wait and let them get big. Run through the rows with a hoe and the weeds will die quickly, especially on a sunny afternoon.
> Fertilize container plants.
Planters and hanging baskets should be fertilized on a weekly basis to keep them healthy and full of bloom. Use a flowering plant fertilizer that has a lower first number (nitrogen, develops foliage), a high middle number (Phosphorous, develops flowers and fruits) and the third number (potassium, strengthens stems and helps disease resistance) should be similar to the first number. A good water soluble flowering plant fertilizer is 12-36-12. it is mixed in with water and then applied.
> Plant the garden.
There is still lots of time to put in a garden. The long hours of daylight means that the garden has lots of time to grow. Carrots, beets, potatoes, salad greens, peas, beans, onion sets, can still all be seeded, and will mature on time. Other crops such as corn, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, squash, etc can be planted as transplants.
-Jos
Jos Van Hage owns and operates two Art Knapp Home and Garden Centres in Prince George:
· Highway 16 West at Kimball Road
· Highway 97 North at Northwood Pulpmill Road
Comments
Jos,
These sound like great ideas, but for some of us the masses of caterpillars are making gardening impossible. I usually have all my all my baskets and planters filled with annuals, but as every surface of my yard is covered in caterpillars, it’s not possible. When they cover your empty planters, you know you have to wait. Gardening in the north is not for the faint of heart. : – (
I am pleased to know that I am not the only one that can not get the gardening done. I can’t even mow the lawn as they are hanging from every tree and have their webs all over the grass and when I go outside they start crawling on me. They have attack all the poplars, mountain ash, flowering trees and shrubs and are now in the evergreens.
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