Having a blooming, beautiful garden starts early in the spring and requires a lot of work. With a little preparation now in the early days of spring, you will be ready for the busy later months and have the prettiest garden on the block!
An early start to the gardening season is the best way to stay prepared! Another smart way to stay organized is with a Cook Garden Shed for all your planting essentials. Learn more about all the great features of our Garden Shed buildings here!
Here are some helpful early spring gardening tips and things to add to your gardening to-do list. And for more gardening advice, read this post.
Pre-summer lawn care essentials
Use a rake to remove any leaf debris from your lawn. Then, use the material as mulch for shrubs and hedges to help conserve moisture and insulate the roots this summer. Put a top coating on your lawn with a mixture of aged manure, peat moss and shredded leaves or purchased a mix. When the soil is dry, aerate your lawn’s soil to improve oxygen access to the root zone.
To help keep pests away, gather blackspot-affected leaves from around roses and spray dormant roses, magnolias and woody shrubs with dormant oil to smother insects.
To prepare your lawn equipment, sharpen lawn mower blades, snub-nosed spades and round shovels and clean the blades of pruners with steel wool. Check the tires of wheelbarrows and add air and tighten up nuts and bolts. Brush out any remaining soil from terra cotta pots and soak them for 30 minutes in a mixture of water and bleach.
Optimize your garden operations
Prepare or purchase a quick-start growth stimulant for perennial plants and add it in the soil around each plant’s root system. Alfalfa weed/pellets helps growth hormones that encourages plant growth. Dutch white clover seed fixes nitrogen in the soil, crowds out weeds and strengthens the overall lawn against drought.
To prepare for any irrigation issues, buy soaker hoses and add them to beds and around shrubs before perennial plants begin growing. Patch any damaged rubber hoses and replace all plastic washers with non-leaking rubber ones. Remember to decrease water evaporation, set your in-ground irrigation system to turn on in the early morning.
Check all plant supports, put peony rings, set up stakes and netting for garden peas and replace or tighten wire supports for fruit plants.
Prune summer flowering shrubs
In order to avoid wasting any potential blossoms, it’s important to be prepared for the first surge of spring growth. Here are 5 plants and flowers to focus on:
- Roses
Remove any dead wood and shorten sections of the living wood that are slimmer than the size of a pencil. - Hydrangea
Cut back canes and branches of plants by about half their length.
- Spirea
Shorten stems of low growing plants by two-thirds their original length.
- Rose of Sharon
Remove up to one-third of the plant’s height before new growth begins.
- Clematis
Cut back the previous year’s growth before buds break. If you’re unsure of what pruning category, it’s safe to cut back half the plant’s height.
You can easily turn your Cook portable building into a garden or potting shed with just some easy tweaks. Find out what else you can convert your shed into with the Cook Building Conversion Guide below!
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