Early Spring (Late march)
Berries Now is a great time to plan out a garden project such as a berry patch. It is also a great time to prune raspberries and other brambles. If you are interested in starting your own raspberry patch, you can read our blog post here . Curious about pruning your berries? Lily wrote about pruning her raspberries, which you can see here.
Once the snow melts, is it time to clean up - yes or no? If you left your perennials standing over the winter - which is best practice for creating pollinator habitat - you can start cutting them back once the snow is gone. We recommend that you leave 8-24” of growth standing and pile up the cut stems, so that insects that have overwintered in the cavities of the stems can emerge once the season warms. It’s still too early to rake leaves and do a spring cleanup as many butterflies and bees are using the leaf litter to stay warm and protected. The Xerces Society has some of the best info on pollinator habitat maintenance, for example this handy “Nesting & Overwintering Habitat” guide.
Spring (April and MAy)
Pollinators that overwinter in the leaf litter take their time to emerge in Spring, they don’t jump awake on the first warm day of the year, but rather wait until it has warmed up consistently. So we recommend that you wait with them, until we have consistent warm weather with both day and night temperatures above 50F. Keep in mind that insects still need cover later on and use leaf litter as a home year-round. Here are some Spring Perennial Garden tasks that keep in mind both beauty and pollinator habitat throughout the seasons:
Start with clearing debris like branches that have fallen over the winter, while leaving the leaf mulch intact. Established perennials will easily grow through it and the mulch helps keep weeds down while providing habitat for little critters. If you have a lawn, instead of raking or using a leaf blower, just mow right over the leaves. Their shredded remains add nutrients to the lawn.
Cut back non-woody perennials to varying heights, leaving some stems 8-24” tall. Cavity nesting bees will use these old stems to lay their eggs later in Spring and Summer. Very quickly, the new growth of your perennials will grow past the height of these stems and make these bee hotels invisible to the human eye. Make piles with the cut back material to provide more habitat, or add them to your compost.
Weed. Early season weeding can significantly reduce the need for weeding later in the season!
Divide fall-blooming perennials.
Mulch with plants instead of bark mulch. Bark mulch robs the soil of nitrogen as it breaks down, and it can harbor invasive weeds, jumping worms and other unfavorables. We recommend creating a living mulch by using plants that grow low, can tolerate some shade, and can easily be divided so that you can, over the years, create a beautiful carpet in the lowest canopy of your garden. Here are some suggestions: (see blog post on alternatives to bark mulch)
It is a great time to look at the garden with an eye on bulbs for fall planting. Taking photos now and marking them up with areas you would like to see spring daffodils, tulips, and other flowering bulbs will make fall bulb planting much more successful. The bare spots of the early garden are much easier to identify in April than in October. A photo album can be a type of garden journal and the mark up tools on your phone can help jog your memory from season to season or year to year.
Midsummer
August is the perfect time to assess the perennial garden and cut back any spent plants, unsightly foliage, and make decisions about plants that need to be divided or removed. It is easy to save these tasks for spring and fall, but mid-summer is when garden spaces show just how crowded they are, so take notes and act accordingly later in the fall or early next spring.
If you are planting shrubs during the heat of summer, make sure to water them well for the remainder of the season. They will need about the equivalent of a 5 gallon bucket’s worth of water once a week. It is always better to water deeply once or twice a week than to water lightly every day. This encourages the roots to go grow and search for water rather than stay at the surface where the effects of the light watering happen.
To take the heat stress off of plants, give them a little love with Compost Plus or Fish / Seaweed emulsion. It is always good to fertilize after pruning too. Anytime a plant is shocked, it benefits from a little feeding and extra attention. The summertime heat and humidity can certainly feel like a shock to all of us.
Do you have a wild, ecological garden as part of your landscape? Or are you curious about what it would take to grow one? Big or small, these types of gardens require less maintenance than more formal or ornamental gardens, but they can easily feel overwhelming with their lush growth and self-seeding tendencies. We recommend this blog post from North Creek Nurseries to help you get a grip on the tasks required to keep these gardens looking good. The authors explain how the horticulture teams at Manhattan’s High Line and Delaware’s Mount Cuba center approach garden maintenance. It is geared towards professional horticulturists, but you know we like to give you pro-tips, and it can all be applied to a residential scale.
Late Summer
Late summer and early fall are ideal times to plant perennials. The days are cooling down, reducing transplant shock and there is still plenty of time for the plants to set roots and establish themselves before winter comes around. Next spring they’ll be ready to take off.
Fall
Here are some early fall cleanup tips from Kat’s garden:
Enjoy your garden work while the weather is still warm. The more you get done now, the less you’ll have to spend in possibly rainy and cold days later on. You don’t need to go crazy, but a little cleanup goes a long way.
Weed now - your garden will be a lot easier to plant and maintain come Spring.
I highly recommend covering your soil with mulch. Once the leaves start dropping, I rake them into my garden beds to keep the soil covered over the winter. Bare ground will erode more quickly and nutrients leach out. Covered soil can act as a protector to roots of perennials and create habitat for pollinators to overwinter in.
If you haven’t yet, now is a good time to add a layer of compost to asparagus and berry beds. If you’re planning on adding these crops to your garden next year, start preparing their beds now. (You can read more about growing raspberries here).
Remove all diseased plants like tomatoes with fungal problems or cabbage stems containing maggots. You don’t want those to overwinter in your yard.
Move perennials around. If you have noticed plants that need dividing or that you’d prefer in a different location, you can either move them now - they still have time to establish roots before winter - or flag them for Spring. It is sometimes hard to remember how your garden looked during peak bounty once we’re in stick season.
Would you like to plant spring bulbs? Tulips, daffodils, and more should all be ordered now for planting in October and November. It is nice to plant a little every year, and over time, your spring display will be a show stopper. We like Brent and Becky’s .
This blog post was written by Kat Consler and Julie Rubaud.