Articles
Tips for Spring Gardening and Planting, with a Fond Farewell
Jan 2016
With the Coloradoan changing their format, this is my final column dispensing timely advice and design suggestions. It’s been a good run and I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to share my thoughts on ways to play harmoniously with nature inside the home and in the landscape.
Thoughts of Spring often bring a yearning for fresh ideas and something distinctively different from the past. Check out classes that are underway at local garden centers and botanic gardens, and pencil in Home Grown Food’s annual Seed Swap on March 6th at the Old Town Library. You can pick up seed packets there and an abundance of information while chatting it up with like-minded locals. Shake things up by selecting new varieties to expand your pallet and life experience. With a little bit of effort and know how, you could start eating salad greens by the end of the month.
Plan your vegetable garden for maximum production by creating a calendar of when to sow seeds indoors and directly in the ground. Make a commitment to saving water using Xeriscape techniques in both the edible and ornamental areas of your landscape. You might also save some time and money with this seven principle approach.
Give thought to how you can create a resilient garden environment to hedge against the changing weather conditions. Plant enough to cover setbacks and share with others in need. Devise a hail deflecting set up to protect your investment.
Come up with a new word or phrase to guide you through the season. Energizing examples of this might be the words envision, movement or expansion. Encouragement for instilling better health practices might be strength, simplify or quietude. Then create a space in your yard which embraces that concept with design elements and features.
February is the critical month for fruit tree pruning, particularly apple and pear. This applies to crabapple, hawthorn and ornamental pear trees as well. It gets the work done before the sap starts to flow in these fireblight-prone plants.
If early spring bulbs are in bloom later this month, display them inside in tiny vases at eye level. Even if they’re short lived, they’ll impart a joy to help get you through the cold of winter. In warm, south facing areas, it is not uncommon to see snowdrops, winter aconite or early crocus poking through the snow or tattered groundcover foliage. Make notes over the next four months to track areas that would benefit from the addition of fall planted bulbs come October.
In closing, may you always find respite and value in the gifts from both the plants and wildlife that inhabit our big backyard. May you retain a sense of wonder and appreciation for the magic of the natural world at large. And finally, may you be inspired to champion the cause of those life giving creatures who unfortunately cannot be heard or often seen over the dizzying din of today’s busy electronic lifestyle.
Please keep in touch, feel free to subscribe to Wild Iris’ e-newsletter and hopefully I will see you soon at a class or in the garden. Be well and live well.