MARCH
- Plant starts of lettuce and cole vegetables, dill, cilantro, parsley. Sow seeds of peas, radishes,carrots, beets. Wait until the soil warms up a bit and the evening temperatures are consistently
50 degrees or above to plant summer vegetables. - Time to plant most permanent landscape plants (shrubs, trees, vines.) Wait until April or May to plant tropicals.
- Act on Nancy Conway’s advice to “…sprinkle gypsum on your garden as you would sprinkle powdered sugar on French toast.”
- Plant container fruit trees
- Final opportunity to spray copper sulfate for peach leaf curl and peach leaf blight before the buds open - never once they have opened or fruit could be damaged.
- Time spent weeding now will reap benefits in the heat of the summer.
APRIL
- Divide crowded clumps of summer-flowering perennials
- Prune and feed citrus
- Plant summer blooming bulbs, corms, and tubers. When planting, feed them with 10-10-10 fertilizer incorporated 1” below the bulb.
- Dig a slow release organic fertilizer into the backfill of everything planted this month.
- Plant warm weather vegetables in compost-amended soil.
MAY
- There is still time to start annual flowers from seed. For faster bloom, buy seedlings.
- Feed potted plants monthly with 50% diluted fertilizer. Increase the frequency in the summer when the need for more water washes out nutrients.
- Maintain mulch throughout the garden.
- Prune spring flowering shrubs and vines after they bloom.
- As most pumpkins need 110-120 days to mature, start sowing seed late this month ( or early in
June.)