‘hands to work, hearts to god:’ first 2011 chores

Yes, you read that right – snowman hands. When I started teaching food safety practices to children I wondered how to teach them about proper hand washing. We all know how important it is to thoroughly wash our hands before preparing food, after touching raw meat and poultry or any other potentially contaminated surface. We can easily explain to children (and adults!) that singing happy birthday twice, while scrubbing hands, equals the prescribed 10 to 15 seconds that we should do while washing. However, how do you explain how much soap to use to create a good lather?? The answer: snowman hands! Use enough soap that your hands look like a snowman’s hands after rubbing them together! I have found great success with this tip while teaching children (and now my own children) to wash their hands properly. And guess what – it takes a good 10 to 15 seconds of scrubbing soapy hands together to create those snowman hands! Bonus to the singing of happy birthday while washing hands! So next time you are washing your hands, use enough soap to create snowman hands. This will help prevent the spread of food-borne illness (and those nasty cold and flu bugs too!).

While romantics look to mid-February as a time to impress their favorite Valentine with chocolates and flowers, experienced gardeners know now is time to show their plants love through careful pruning! In a recent blog, Kerrie Roach discussed fruit tree pruning. Here, I will concentrate on ornamental landscape plants. While it is time to prune many plants, as usual, there is an exception to the rule. Do not prune plants that flower from late winter to mid-May, such as azalea, forsythia, and weigela, in winter. Gardenias also fall into this category but don’t bloom until June. Pruning now removes flower blooms resulting in a sparse spring floral display. Wait until after these plants complete flowering this spring to prune. For an extensive list of the optimal pruning times for individual plants, visit HGIC 1053 Pruning Shrubs.

The Perennial Plant of the Year® for 2022 is a lovely native grass, little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium). The Perennial Plant Association designates a plant of the year annually. They choose perennials that are “suitable for a wide range of growing climates, require low maintenance, have multiple-season interest, and are relatively pest/disease-free.”

They go by many common names, including horsemint and bergamot, but the common name I like the most for the plants in the genus Monarda is “Bee Balm.” Just as the name suggests, this group of plants is highly attractive to many types of bees and other pollinators and is a fantastic addition to any pollinator garden, providing an attractive flower display and nectar source through the hot summer months.

FIRST, THE HAIRCUTS: Many perennials (euphorbia, some true geraniums, ribbon grass orPhalaris) do better the second half of the seasonif cut back hard. Others need just deadheading. Annuals that grow leggy can often benefit from a chop job, too. Do some experiments. Sometimes a plant can’t look worse, and you probably won’t kill it. :-)MAKE A PASS through each bed each week, since weeds are not just unsightly but steal moisture, nutrients and light from desired plants. Top up mulch in all garden beds if washed or worn away to help in the plight.IF YOU ARE IN JAPANESE BEETLE territory, handpick (as with other obvious pests like tomato hornworms) in early morning and drown in a can of water to reduce infe

THE POPULAR SPRING GARDEN WORKSHOPS I teach with my old friend Bob Hyland, former head of horticulture for Brooklyn Botanic Garden, are now listed on my 2011 Events Calendar page, with links to registration and ticket information. A full-day spring garden tuneup workshop April 16, and two half-day container-gardening workshops May 21, are scheduled (along with all my garden lectures–including some new ones just posted).

THE NEW SEASON IS HEATING UP, at least visually, even as temperatures trend downward. I’ll be interested to see what the fall foliage season amounts to after what seems like a record wet year. I wonder if it will come close to last year (which was dry). I will say the fruiting plants here have produced abundant crops (like hollies, viburnums, and crabapples).TIME TO COOK UP the last bits from the vegetable garden into a batch of ‘Tomato Junk’ or soup, or local/homegrown apples into easy applesauce, checking on the kettles between rounds of raking and cutbacks outdoors. All my harvest-stashing tips are recapped here. With such delicious reminders of summer and fall in the freezer, and the right plants in the garden, there’s no “end” to fear. Some of us even feel happy about the coming riches: berries and other fruits, bark, a new season of birds.PEAK PLANTING TIME for bulbs

VEGETABLE GARDENTUBERS AND SLIPS: Are the white potatoes in the ground? Sweet potatoes can go in this month, too.CONTINUE SOWING CARROTS, beets, radishes, salad greens, dill. With salad greens, select heat-resistant varieties now for best results as they’ll bump into warmer weather. A primer on when to start what seeds.DIRECT-SOW BEANS at mid-month and beyond; sow a short row e

WE EACH HAVE BOUNDARIES, LINES WE DON’T WANT CROSSED. Apparently a certain garden tool depicted here sits right on one such line.

THE FALL IS COMING, the fall is coming. Nothing to worry about, Chicken Little, if the garden’s been planned for enjoyment in all seasons…well, unless you slack off now and let those foxy weeds go to seed and gobble up the whole place. No, no definitive “end” to the season lies ahead, and some of us even feel happy about the coming of slightly quieter, more contemplative times where less obvious garden stars can shine.PEAK PLANTING AND DIVIDING time is upon us; make that work include some focus on the addition of fall and winter plants to the landscape.Maybe something gold?Maybe something full of fruit, like this or this or this?AS YOU BEGIN to wind down and clean up, take notes of what worked and didn’t. Mark areas that would have been easier to maintain with a workhorse groundcover in place, for ins

First, though, I recommend a long, hard look. I walked around outside the last week of June with a pad and pen–and a critical eye. In the flurry of spring prep, planting and pruning, I’d been working around some problems rather than tackling them properly.Where perennials or even worse, shrubs, are bulging out of the beds and drooping onto the lawn, it’s time for a decision. (And no, the decision cannot be “mow around them and deal with it later,” which is what I always do in a few spots in spring.) Time to either reduce the plants by division or pruning, or make the bed bigger, easing passage around its perimeter. I’m doing some of each (but waiting for fall weather for the divisions if it stays hot and relatively dry here).NOW, ONWARD! JULY STARTS OUT as Throw In the Trowel Month here, with June’s cutbacks s

FIRST, THE HAIRCUTS: If you were squeamish about cutbacks as spring faded, you may be regretting it now, and facing floppy, exhausted plants in certain spots. Some things (like certain perennial Geraniums, for instance) do better if cut back hard. Go for it. Others need just deadheading of spent blooms. Annuals that grow leggy can often benefit from a chop job, too. Do some experiments. Sometimes a plant can’t look worse, and you probably won’t kill it. :-)MAKE A PASS through each bed each week, since weeds are not just unsightly but steal moisture, nutrients and light from desired plants. Top up mulch in all garden beds if washed or worn away to help in the plight.LOOK WHILE WEEDING: Try to remember what’s done well (and not so well) so far in each bed. Make notes, to