Garden Calendar

February

• Give your tools a good cleaning and sharpening.
• Get your seed orders in if you haven’t already to ensure you get what you want. This year plan to grow at least one new vegetable that you've never grown before; it may be better than what you are already growing.
• Resist the urge to work in the garden! Warm spring days can be deceiving, and unpacking perennials too early can spell disaster when the weather inevitably turns again.
• Collect all of your seed starting equipment together so you’ll be ready to go. You will need lights, heat mats, sterile medium, and your preferred pot type.
• Start your first seeds inside for broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, eggplant, head lettuce, onions, and parsley. 
• Most perennial flowers should be started inside by the end of the month as well. You can also start inside flowers and herbs that have a long germination period, like rosemary, snapdragons, and begonias.

March

• If you haven’t already, now is a great time to prune your fruit trees, berry bushes, and other woody ornamentals on your property. You want to complete this while still dormant and before spring growth begins.
• Start transplants indoors of tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant.
• On nice days, turn your compost pile. 
• Resist working your garden soil! Working soil when it is still too cold and wet creates compacted clots.
• Clean up any leftover dried debris from garden beds and toss in the compost pile.

 April

• Prune Zinnias. When the young zinnia plant is 6-8 inches tall, cut the central stem just above 2-3 side shoots. This early pruning encourages
  
  multiple stems rather than one.

• The second or third week of April should be safe to start the process of hardening off for transplant outside of your broccoli, onions, parsley, and any other cool season crops that are at least 5 weeks old. Select smaller rather than larger plants of the cole crops (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts) since overly mature plants exposed to low temperatures early in the season tend to bolt into flower too early.
• Establish new plantings of grapes, strawberries, raspberries, asparagus, and rhubarb as soon as the ground can be worked. 
• Even though the garden soil may be thawed, you'll want to wait until the soil has had time to drain away all of that extra moisture so that it's not a muddy mess when you start digging and raking to prepare your beds. Seeds planted in soil that is too wet will rot. When you push your shovel into the soil to see if it's time to plant, it should not pull up clumps of wet soil. It should emerge relatively clean.
• Clean and put up hummingbird feeders on April 28.

May

• Wait as long as you can to do your spring garden clean up. Ideally, you should wait until the daytime temperatures are consistently above 50 degrees F for at least 7 consecutive days. Pollinators and other helpful bugs will thank you.

• Outdoors you can sow seeds directly into the garden for beets, carrots, chard, kohlrabi, late cabbage, leaf lettuce, mustard, collards, turnips, radish, spinach, onion sets, onion seeds for bunching onions, and peas.

• Have a trellis system in place for your tomato patch before the plants begin to sprawl.

• Plant new trees and shrubs now.

• Take suckers from lilac and replant elsewhere (behind the new perennial bed).

• Begin hardening-off frost tender plants now including vegetables, herbs, perennial and annual flowers that have been started indoors.

• Fertilize perennial flowers (Peony) now as growth is beginning. Most will only need fertilizing every three years and only at this time of year.

• Harvest asparagus. Pick for about two weeks and then stop so the fronds can unfold and begin feeding the root system. Harvest for three weeks the next year, and four to six weeks after that. Pick too much, and your plants will not be able to develop the strong root system and energy reserves they'll need to produce an abundant crop of spears the following season. The diameter of the spear has no bearing on quality. Spears should be harvested when they are 5" to 7" high and before the tips begin to loosen. 

• By the end of this month, it should be safe to plant almost everything outdoors -tender annual flowers like impatiens as well as tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants. 

• Cover Brassica crops with floating row cover to protect from cabbage moth and flea beetle damage.

• Wrap zucchini stem in Ace bandage or aluminum foil to protect from vine borer.

• Newly transplanted vegetable plants should be protected from cutworms with collars. Cut strips of cardboard two inches wide by eight inches long, staple them into circles and place them around the plants. Press the collar about one inch into the soil. These collars will fence out the cutworms and protect the stems of the vegetable plants.

• Forsythia Propogation- Continue the forsythia hedge across the front by Zenner Road.  Take spring cuttings from new plant growth as soon as forsythia comes into leaf.

June

• Fertilize Asparagus mid-spring or late summer when it is actively growing.

• Add compost and fertilizer to Peony after flowering.

• Move bulbs right after they go dormant. The best time to dig up spring-flowering bulbs, such as your daffodils and grape hyacinth, is about six weeks after they finish blooming. At this point the foliage will have died back (if it hasn't, wait longer) but you can still see it, which makes locating the bulb easy.

• Aphids of all types show up on a range of host plants as soon as the warm weather arrives. Look for them in newly unfurling foliage and sticky leaves are also a sign of their presence since they secrete a ‘honeydew’. Black sooty bold may also in this sticky substance and while alarming looking does little to no damage since it does not penetrate the leaves. Aphids, however, do damage the plant. Spray leaves with a strong jet of water to dislodge most of them. Insecticidal soap is an organic approved product that provides pretty good control as long as the insects are wetted well. A second and third treatment to kill newly hatched eggs may be needed in 5-7 days.

• Squash vine borer adults are 1 inch long, orange and green day-flying moths that are emerging from the soil now. They lay brown, button-shaped, 1/16 inch eggs at the base of the vines of summer and winter squashes. Examine stems daily and remove eggs by hand to prevent burrowing of larvae as they hatch. Wrap lower 6 –12 inches of stem with aluminum foil or floating row cover to prevent egg laying.

• Early June is an excellent time to take softwood cuttings of shrubs to start new plants. Some shrubs which can be propagated in this way are spirea, lilac and viburnum.

• Stay out of the garden when the vegetable plant leaves are wet. Walking through a wet garden spreads disease from one plant to another.

• After your vegetable garden is well established, it is best to water it thoroughly once a week rather than giving it a light watering every day. That way, a deeper root system is encouraged to develop, which will later help the plants tolerate dry weather.

• In most cases, blossom-end rot on tomatoes, peppers, squash and watermelons can be prevented. Do this by maintaining uniform soil moisture by mulching and watering correctly, planting in well drained soil and not cultivating deeper than one inch within one foot of the plant. Also avoid the use of high nitrogen fertilizers.

• Continue planting direct-seeded, warm season vegetable crops such as beans, summer squash and cucumbers.

•  Everbearing strawberries should be fertilized use one pound of fertilizer per 100 square feet in three or four installments spread out evenly from early spring through early August.  June-bearing strawberries should be fertilized after the last harvest of the season. Pinch back strawberry flowers for the first year.

• Prune the catmint hard after its first flowering is over. 

July

• Start seeds indoors for heading cole crops (broccoli) for your fall garden now.

• Watch the leaves of your tomato plants for signs of leaf spot diseases.

• Continue monitoring for pest insects talked about in the June task list.

• Garden flowers, whether annuals or perennials, benefit from "deadheading" after flowering. By removing the spent flower heads, energy is used to produce more flowers or foliage and roots. Many will produce another flush of blooms.

• Flowering requires lots of energy so it can be quite helpful to fertilize flowering annual plants once flowering begins with an all-purpose liquid fertilizer such as 20-10-20. Fertilize one more time before the end of the season.

• Make a strong comfrey compost tea. When the leaves are at least 2 feet tall, use a garden knife or shears to cut them down to a couple of inches above the soil. Harvest the outer leaves first so the plant can continue growing. Fill any size container halfway with fresh comfrey cuttings. Fill with water, cover, and steep for 3-6 weeks. Warning: This will smell really bad! Strain off the liquid and dilute by half. Do not use on young plants.

• Divide and transplant bearded iris using the vigorous ends of the rhizomes. Discard the old center portion. Cut the leaves back to about six inches.

• Consider installing a bat house to encourage bat habitat, they eat mosquitoes!

• Transplant iris is in the summer, after the iris have finished blooming, up until fall.

August

• Continue your bug removal pest damage inspections! Remove and treat as needed.

• Avoid pruning trees and shrubs since doing so this late in the season can stimulate new growth that will not harden off in time for the cold winter weather ahead. Delay pruning until the end of the dormant season early next spring.

• This is a good time to order and plant spring flowering bulbs for next year's early flower display. Plan for different flowering times to extend the season.

• Continue deadheading flowers which will allow plants to use energy reserves for a final flower display.

• Some perennial flowers and bulbs will start to go dormant this month. Marking their location with a painted popsicle stick or drawing out a map of your bed is helpful come spring so you don’t forget where things are.

• Pick summer squash and zucchini every day or two to keep the plants producing. Allow plants to get only 6- 8" long (one hand span) before harvesting 

• Remove old plants which have stopped producing to eliminate a shelter for insects and disease organisms.

• Every weed that produces seed means more trouble next year. Control weeds before they go to seed.

September

• The earlier in late summer or early fall you can plant bearded iris the better results you will have.
• Move established peony to new perennial bed. Plant new blue hydrangea in front slope bed.
• Make preparations for mulching your beds for the winter. Bagged mulch is always available, but getting a truckload delivered is very economical. If you don’t think you can use a whole truckload, ask your neighbors if you can split a load.
• Many fibrous rooted perennials should be transplanted every 3 -5 years as a general rule. Fall is the time to divide and transplant plants that flower in the spring while fall flowering ones like chrysanthemums should be done in the spring. Divide peonies and iris. Cut back tops to 4 -6" to reduce transplant stress. Thoroughly prepare the new planting site.
• Keep harvesting second plantings of the cool season vegetables including radishes, lettuce, Chinese cabbage, chard, spinach, broccoli, and the other cole crops. 
• Allow plants to finish the summer growth cycle in a normal manner. Never encourage growth with heavy applications of fertilizer or excessive pruning. Plants will delay their dormancy process that has already begun in anticipation of winter in the months ahead. New growth can be injured by an early freeze.
• Fall is a good time for improving your garden soil. Add manure, compost and leaves to increase the organic matter content. Wood ashes contain phosphorous, potassium and calcium. They can be placed on vegetable gardens and flower beds as a top dressing that will feed into the soil all winter.
• Be sure to keep strawberry beds weed free. Every weed you pull now will help make weeding much easier next spring.
• Take cuttings from your rosemary plant after the flower has finished blooming in late summer. 

October

• Plant Garlic bulbs just before first frost. Plant cloves 3" to 4" deep, orienting them so the pointy ends face up. Water gently to settle the soil, and then cover the bed with a 4" to 6" layer of straw. Even as air temperatures drop, the soil will stay warm enough for the newly planted cloves to establish roots before the ground freezes. Sometimes you'll see some green shoots form in fall; that's fine and won't harm plants. They'll begin growing in earnest in spring. If you planted hardneck varieties, they'll probably form curly scapes. It's best to cut these off so the plants will direct their energy to producing large underground bulbs. The tender stalks can be used in stir-fries or sauteed with vegetables.
• Plant spring flowering bulbs. Once your daytime temperatures are in the 60’s or lower consistently, this is a good time to plant your tulips. Swap out purple Alium for two blue varieties.
• Drain the hoses and empty the bird baths before a hard frost.
• Dig and divide spring and summer flowering perennials now. Late summer and fall flowering ones can be done in the spring. Cut foliage back, replant and water well. Wait until winter is in full-swing to add new mulch for winter protection during their first winter.
• Cut and dry or freeze remaining herbs.
• Remove, chop, and compost asparagus tops after they have yellowed and died for the season. Wait until the ground has frozen to mulch.
• Cut strawberry foliage down to one inch. This can be done after the first couple of frosts, or when air temps reach 20°F (-6°C).Mulch strawberry and asparagus plants about 4 inches deep with straw.
• Save seeds from favorite self-pollinating, non-hybrid flowers such as marigolds by allowing the flower heads to mature. Lay seeds on newspaper and turn them often to dry. Store the dry seeds in glass jars or envelopes in a cool, dry, dark place.
• Comfrey cuttings make an excellent bioactivator in the compost bin. If you have a large amount of dried brown material—such as fall leaves—layering it with comfrey cuttings is an efficient way to balance out the carbon-to-nitrogen ratio and jumpstart decomposition.
• Make a note of any particular productive or unsatisfactory varieties of vegetables that you planted this year. Such information can be very useful when planning next years' garden.