Your early spring gardening ‘to-do’ list
March is starting. In some circles, especially meteorological ones, the beginning of March is also the beginning of spring. There are many signs that spring is close.
Bulbs have been emerging in the last several weeks. This will continue until their blooming time arrives. Between now and then, we will get nights with cold temperatures, and some parts of the country may even get some snow. Let’s hope not, but when winter stops back for periodic visits, you don’t have to worry about the bulbs. They will be fine. Nature is in control. The bulbs would not have started to emerge if they could not tolerate the weather.
It is time to cut back your perennial flowers. This includes ornamental grasses. The tops of these plants left from last year are dead forever. The plants produce new foliage from the roots every spring, so you’ll want to remove the old foliage before the new emerges. This gives the plant a clean, fresh new start.
You might already be seeing some weeds growing in your beds. This is chickweed and hairy bittercress. These weeds are not new arrivals. They are cool-season weeds that germinated back in the fall when the temperatures dropped. They germinated from seeds left from the weeds you had this time last year.
These weeds will go away when the weather gets warm again. Before they die, they will flower. The flowers will produce seeds and we will be right back here again next year. You can break this cycle by eliminating these weeds before they flower this season. Fertilome’s Weed Free Zone is a great product to use for this. It is effective in temperatures as low as 45 degrees.
This is also a great time to treat your boxwoods with a systemic insecticide if they were infested and damaged by either the boxwood leaf miners or the psyllids. If your boxwoods had yellowing and browning leaves in late spring or early summer last year, you most likely had these insects.
You will want to use an insecticide referred to as a “systemic drench” to treat for these insects. These products are easy to use. They are mixed in a watering can or bucket according to the directions and applied to the roots of the plant. The insecticide is taken into the plant. Then, when the insects hatch from eggs produced last year, they will be controlled.
I also want to remind you again to be patient with evergreen plants you have that were damaged from the sub-zero temperatures many experienced back in December. Weather events like that are thankfully very rare. For this reason, we do not have much experience determining how the plants will react. These plants, cherry laurels in particular, appear to be dead as all of the foliage has been brown and dry all winter. It is possible that these plants may recover. It is also possible that some may not. Either way, only time will determine which ones will recover.
I am telling you this so you do not go out and pull these plants out to replace them. Give them time. There was a similar situation to this in 2015. Many people who either neglected to replace or were patient to wait were surprised when they saw their plants recover. This recovery did not start to happen until May.
A plant that has been established for a few years cannot be replaced. The only option is to start over with smaller plants. Patience with these plants could potentially help you avoid starting over.