3 minute read
HOW TO GARDEN
(WHEN YOU DON’T HAVE TIME TO GARDEN)
by Katie Palm
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As I write this, I look out my window and my perennial garden is covered in two feet of snow - and more is falling! The vision of my early bulbs peeking out of the ground seems like a dream that won’t ever arrive. But, like all seasons, this winter too will pass and before I know it, I will be out prepping my garden for spring. Everyone approaches their garden with different priorities. Some prefer a hands-on method that creates a perfectly manicured vision. Others find beauty in the wild untamed-ness of letting your garden grow as it wants. I find I am a "time gardener" - I only make it into the garden when I have the time, which isn’t as often as I would like. This means that my spring cleanup may be the only attention I give my plants for several weeks.
Here are my favorite tips for starting your garden off right, even when you can’t devote as much time to it as you’d like:
LEAVE THE DEER FENCE UP. One of the first lessons I learned when I started gardening in the Catskills was that deer love just about any green shoots that appear in a perennial garden. I think they consider my flower bed their personal salad bar! If you want to have beautiful plants earlier in the season, keep that deer fence up until there is plenty of food for the deer out in the woods.
DON’T CLEAN UP. Leave the dead plant material in the fall. I leave seed heads for migrating and winter birds. The dead leaves and stems provide winter protection for overwintering insects. It is quite common for our family to spot wooly bears crawling out of the remaining plant material on a warm spring day. Because I am a time gardener, I often find that I am cleaning out the dead plant material after the new shoots have started to appear. Rather than feel like I am slacking on my gardening duties, I tell myself that I have protected those early shoots from late frosts.
PHOTO: SARAH MCGINNIS
PRUNE. There is nothing more satisfying than cleaning out old dead stems on my roses. Or every other year cutting my hydrangea back to the ground so it doesn’t take over space needed for my peonies. A good rule of thumb about knowing when to prune shrubs is to pay attention to when they flower. If they bloom before June – wait to prune until after bloom. If you prune these early spring blooming shrubs too early, you will be removing flower buds and reducing that year’s display.
PLAN AHEAD. Knowing myself as a gardener with limited time, I have learned to install my plant supports when I conduct my spring clean. I really like the grow-through plant supports for my peony plants. It is much easier to help the shoots get through a support that is already in place than to try and maneuver long stems through a support that you are installing too late in the season.
REFRESH THE SOIL. In the spring, I check my mulch level in the garden. I have gotten into a routine where every 2-3 years I add fresh mulch to my garden. The amount of mulch I add depends on how much of the old mulch has broken down and how much of my soil has migrated out of my manmade beds on top of a hill. My favorite mulching method is to cover the flower bed with wet newspaper and then cover the newspaper with mulch. The newspaper acts as an extra barrier to keep weeds out of the garden. It breaks down within a couple years – as does the mulch.
Enjoy the last days of winter. Browse the spring seed catalogs and garden magazines and dream of the garden beauty to come. Happy gardening!
