Why wait? You can plant now
“The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another. The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month.” — Henry Van Dyke
There used to be a time when we had two distinct spring-planting seasons. The early, “bare root” season, ran from early April through early May. Years ago, when I was in my early teens, I cut my teeth in the business at my father’s garden centre in Willowdale. My first job was to dig young privet, forsythia, lilacs and small trees out of the mud, wrap them up and off the customer would trundle with five Lombardy poplar trees under their arm.
The second spring planting season was the “annual” bedding- plant season, which began on the May 24 weekend and ran until either stock ran out or summer heat sent Canadian gardeners to a hammock with a cold drink. My, how things have changed. No one sells nursery-stock bare root any more. Most annuals are available before May 24 and remain in reasonably plentiful supply right through the summer. All but gone are the trays of smallcelled packs that hold up to 72 plants. Valleyview Gardens, in Agincourt, is one of the few retailers that offer a broad selection of vegetables in those growing trays. It is still the best value for your money if you plan to plant a large quantity of tomatoes, peppers and the like. The cell pack has been replaced by the 31⁄2- or 4-inch pot at a much greater cost per plant.
Today I offer my foolproof guide to shopping for the best value in plants:
REVOLUTIONARY CONTAINERS
It is late April and there will be gardeners counting the days until the May 24 weekend when they can safely plant outdoors. But you can be planting this weekend, if you choose. Late April and early May provide a great opportunity for anyone interested in sprucing up their yard with, well, a spruce. Or a maple. Or a forsythia. All of the winter-hardy, bare-root nursery stock we sold a generation ago that was dug fresh from the field with roots wrapped in burlap is now grown in nursery pots. They’re loosely referred to as “woodies” in the busi- ness. The majority of this stock was potted a year or more ago, grown above ground in aggregate soil and over-wintered in plastic-covered hoop houses on the nursery farm. As soon as the sun provides enough strength to thaw the frozen roots and soil, those plants are ready for sale. They have been arriving at retailers for the past four weeks.
This time of year affords the home gardener the best selection of hardy plants. A full-service garden centre will have a broad range of fruit trees, berry bushes, roses, shade trees and, well, you name it. Broadly speaking, the only plants that are not available yet are the frost-tender annuals and vegetable plants that arrive mid May.
DON’T WANT TO PLANT YET?
If you purchase your woodies now but do not have the soil prepared for planting, no worries. Hold your new plants on the north or east side of your home where they are protected from excess wind and sun, and keep well watered. It is preferable to let the soil dry about two centimetres down between water applications. They will be fine there for up to a month.
I have ordered 25 very special Bonica roses from my favourite retailer and plan to pick them up this week. Last year I tried to get them later in the season and was out of luck. Such is the nature of the nursery-stock business. That is not to say you need to hurry all of your buying decisions on account of a thin supply. The truth is, we have an abundance of nursery stock on the market. Standard, or staple, plants will be in good supply right through the summer.
SUMMER PLANTING
One of the tremendous advantages of container-grown nursery stock is that you can plant it all summer long. Planting now makes more sense in that you will enjoy new growth on your plants this spring, and their roots will begin to grow down to provide drought tolerance and a more stable foundation than the summer planted ones.
Perennials are another interesting study. Delphiniums, hosta, peonies, daylilies and the like are now available at retailers in abundance. You will find some early flowering perennials in full bloom, tempting you like candy floss tempts a kid. With a few weeks of potential frost ahead of us, I offer three words of caution: harden them off.
Container-grown perennials vs. the field-grown varieties have been forced to grow early in greenhouses. This provides the retailer with a better-looking product for you to buy but it has not been conditioned to the cold evening temperatures that we will get over the next month or so.
Hardening off your new purchases is not difficult. Just place them out of doors during the day when air temperatures are well above freezing and bring them back indoors when night frost is called for. Do this for about two weeks and then plant them in their permanent place.
COLD-HARDY COLOUR
As with most things in life, there are lots of exceptions to every rule. Take annual flowers, for instance. While the rest of the world waits patiently for the May 24 planting weekend, you can get a head start by planting pansies, violas, ranunculus, violets and primulas. While none of these technically are annuals, they are treated that way by most gardeners. All of them will tolerate some frost.
Some true annuals are frost hardy, to a degree. Geraniums, dusty miller, snapdragons and salvia are known to take temperatures below freezing, but only when they have been hardened off. Each autumn there is plenty of evidence of their toughness. I have seen geraniums, for instance, look stunning in the middle of November.
QUESTION OF THE WEEK
Q: I used corn gluten on my lawn last week. Can I still overseed the lawn this spring? A: Corn gluten is used to prevent crabgrass seed germination. Corn gluten inhibits the germination of all seeds, including grass seed. Wait at least 12 weeks before sowing grass seed.