Southeast Gardener's March Checklist

Southeast Gardener's March Checklist

Southeast Gardener's March Checklist

March is a fantastic time. As you plan your garden this season, think about doing something different. Flex your horticultural muscle and mix veggies together with ornamentals, include a wildlife pond, grow herbs in containers or add a blossom to serve as a host plant for butterflies. Beauty may be had in the most unusual ways.

With the arrival of spring, we would like to see amazing gardens. Look for events garden trips and symposia. A tour is a good way to explore inspirational gardens, to learn about plants that do well in your region and to walk away with a thousand ideas while having a fun time. Even in the event that you take away only one thought, it will be worth it. My gauge for a successful tour of numerous gardens is when each garden was somebody from the group’s favourite.

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The New York Botanical Garden

Cozy around clematis. If you have always wanted to plant a clematis in your mailbox, now’s a fantastic time to plant you, but only if you’ve got a sunny location that doesn’t receive the hot afternoon sun. Clematis needs good drainage and good soil. Mulch maintain the roots cool.

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Setup a container garden. A container garden is simply a smaller version of a garden bed. Strut your gardening stuff together with container gardens; go beyond a single annual for a color accent. Try planting your container garden with vegetables, ornamentals, herbs, foliage or succulents.

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Prune fig trees. Engineered timber needs to be removed, even though it means severely cutting the plant. For the very best fruit production, figs need to be limed and fertilized.

It requires 1/2 pound of 15-5-5 fertilizer (the numbers stand for the quantities of potassium, potassium and phosphorus) for each 3 feet of tree height. By way of instance, a 6-foot-tall fig tree would need about a pound of fertilizer. Spread the fertilizer around the drip line of the plant and only beyond. After you water from the fertilizer, mulch the area around the tree.

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Have a tendency to fruit trees. Blueberries may be fertilized lightly, but too much fertilizer can lessen the fruit crop. The same fertilizer for azaleas may be used on blueberries.

Be sure there’s clean, fresh compost around fruit trees and bushes. Keep the mulch away in the trunks to prevent insect, vole and mouse damage. Mulch retains weeds under management, conserves moisture, moderates soil temperature and may shield ripe fruit that falls to the ground.

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Cut back roses. Keep climbing roses to a fair size by cutting one cane to the ground and allowing a fresh cane to shape. If you do so for three or four decades, you will have a bush that produces blooms over a broader area, together with canes of different heights from the bottom up. The younger, shorter branches (canes) will produce more blossoms than the older, more woody ones.

For mini roses, cut out all dead growth, eliminate any crowded or diseased canes, and cut back the remaining canes to produce a rounded form. For hybrid teas and floribundas, reduce canes to induce new growth. Eliminate damaged canes. After you cut back the roses, refresh the compost by substituting the old with new.

When you’re finished cutting back plants and substituting the mulch, it is recommended to treat rosebushes with a lime-sulfur spray to combat overwintering insects and disease problems.

Expert Pruning Secrets for Exquisite Roses

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Tidy camellia blossoms. Spent camellia blossoms, particularly with C. japonicas, are prone to petal blight. Remove fallen blooms — and those prepared to collapse — to protect against the spread of disease and insect problems. If you suspect that the faded blossoms have blight, do not put them in the compost pile. Instead, set them in a plastic bag and dispose of it in the trash.

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Snip some cuttings. If you’re overwintering geraniums, begonias, coleus or impatiens, now’s a fantastic time to take cuttings. March cuttings will be prepared to put in the ground by May.

Heal for pests. Leaf miners will make their appearance. They appear as a swarms of small flying insects hovering around hollies and other evergreen shrubs and trees, they then put eggs on the leaves. When the larvae hatch, they bore or “mine” into the foliage to shape the tunnels. To reduce the issue, it is possible to spray infested plants with a dormant oil to smother eggs.

My absolute nemesis is the vole; it compels me (and others) mad. Voles become busy again in March. To help reduce their destruction, keep mulch away from the trunks of trees and trees. If you see in what resembles a mouse hole in your flower bed, especially where you develop lilies and other bulbs, it is likely a vole hole. Stop the madness. Try this: Bait a mousetrap with apple and peanut butter, and place it next to the pit.

Inform us How are you planning your garden for spring?

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