{"id":3932,"date":"2023-03-27T14:05:50","date_gmt":"2023-03-27T22:05:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/?p=3932"},"modified":"2023-03-27T14:31:12","modified_gmt":"2023-03-27T22:31:12","slug":"spring-ready-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/spring-ready-garden\/","title":{"rendered":"Spring-Ready Garden"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Squirrel<\/a>I was very excited recently to see a newspaper article entitled \u201cHow to get your garden spring ready in one weekend.\u201d\u00a0 I was ready, the garden was more than ready, and frankly, I was looking for those magical tips and miraculous hacks that would condense the work of several weeks into one forty-eight hour period.<\/p>\n

Of course I didn\u2019t have the entire weekend available, due to the inescapable fact that the state and Federal governments require me to file tax returns.\u00a0 Still, I was hoping, as always, to maximize the available hours with the benefit of excellent advice.<\/p>\n

Imagine my chagrin when the first paragraph was about lawns\u2014grass cutting, reseeding bald patches and collecting and shredding dead leaves.<\/p>\n

When I think of spring clean-up, the lawn is the least of my worries.\u00a0 I might add that I do indeed shred the dead leaves, but only after raking them out the beds. All the lawn and garden leaf detritus gets shredded via a single pass with the lawnmower.<\/p>\n

I skipped the part about \u201ccleaning up the greenhouse\u201d, because I don\u2019t have one.\u00a0 I really should clean out the garage, but that will take longer than forty-eight hours and it will do nothing for the spring-readiness of the garden, not to mention the spring-readiness of my psyche.<\/p>\n

I thought about \u201cfreshening up the grasses\u201d, because I own one stand of tall variegated miscanthus grass that isn\u2019t looking terribly fresh.\u00a0 I am not wild about the miscanthus, but it responds to my lack of interest by growing vigorously every year.\u00a0 All of the \u201cfreshening up\u201d it will ever get from me will come from the act of hacking the dead foliage all the way back to the ground.\u00a0 Fortunately that fits with the forty-eight hour plan, because it only takes fifteen minutes.<\/p>\n

As for some of the other steps, including \u201cplant potatoes\u201d, \u201cgrow your own salad leaves\u201d and \u201cbuild a bug hotel\u201d, I will save time and effort by not doing them.\u00a0 Salad leaves might get sown eventually, but this year potatoes will come from the local Farmers\u2019 Market.\u00a0 I can probably get a pre-made \u201cbug hotel\u201d at the same place.<\/p>\n

I will take the author\u2019s \u00a0advice and give my roses a quick prune.\u00a0 It will be a once-over that will happen just after I rake out those beds and get the worst of the chickweed, onion grass, and other plant marauders out with the help of my large garden fork. More comprehensive rose pruning will come after the garden cleanout.\u00a0 In one weekend, I can probably get rid of the majority of dead or weak branches, introducing a little quick shaping as I go.\u00a0 The roses have broken dormancy now, starting on the growth that will eventually lead to abundant blooms.\u00a0 They need the fertilizer mentioned in the article and I will add fertilizing to my bed-specific list of quick fixes.<\/p>\n

If I were giving out advice on shaping up the garden for spring in one weekend, I would focus on leaves and debris.\u00a0 The beds are full of them, as are the bases of the hedges and individual shrubs.\u00a0 Getting them all raked out and taken care of makes the entire property look better and lets the snowdrops, crocuses and early daffodils shine.\u00a0 A leaf blower would help, but to date I have found better ways to spend my money, so I will use the rake.\u00a0 Admittedly, it is slower, but I will not be deaf at the end.<\/p>\n

The shrub pruning that the article advises will be limited, because so many of my shrubs are spring bloomers.\u00a0 To prune now would be to deny myself the bouquets that I will assemble from my flowering quince, deutzia, weigela and \u201cbridal veil\u201d spirea in a few week\u2019s time.\u00a0 I will save time, effort and flowers by only pruning the wayward butterfly bushes and roses of Sharon.\u00a0 They don\u2019t flower until later in the season and will be undisturbed by a good, quick haircut right now.<\/p>\n

By eliminating at least half of the chores mentioned in the article, I was actually able to accomplish a lot of \u201cfreshening up \u201cin one weekend.\u00a0 I feel better, the garden looks better, and next weekend I might just have the time and inclination to take some of the author\u2019s other recommendations, like growing strawberries in an old hanging basket, or cleaning houseplant containers before repotting their contents.<\/p>\n

Sometimes gardening is about multi-tasking.\u00a0 Sometimes it is about editing.\u00a0 A combination of the two is most likely the best way to get the garden \u201cspring ready\u201d in a single weekend.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was very excited recently to see a newspaper article entitled \u201cHow to get your garden spring ready in one weekend.\u201d\u00a0 I was ready, the garden was more than ready, and frankly, I was looking for those magical tips and miraculous hacks that would condense the work of several weeks into one forty-eight hour period. … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2,1,5],"tags":[2856,947,81,418,1861],"class_list":["post-3932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-uncategorized","category-winter","tag-garden-clean-upo","tag-ornamental-grasses","tag-pruning","tag-pruning-roses","tag-spring-garden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3932"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3933,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3932\/revisions\/3933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}