Spring Has Sprung!

Posted on Thursday, March 20, 2025 · Leave a Comment 

Watering wands get lots of water where you want it.

It’s April, and spring has sprung. Or will soon. Winter always is a sneaky devil, coming back with hard frosts and even a foot of snow on occasion. There is much to do, but start slowly – not just for your back, which has been resting all winter, but because a week of warm sunny days doesn’t mean your soil is warm enough to plant. A soil thermometer pushed 3 inches into the soil should read 50 degrees before planting anything – even spinach and so called cold weather crops.

 

As you move around your garden you will probably notice that the soil is moist. If you are leaving footprints in the lawn or garden soil, stay off it until it dries out more. Otherwise you can ruin soil structure by compacting it.

 

You can put down 6-inch planks as walkways in flower beds if you are determined to weed or to remove leaves and debris while the soil is still a bit wet. But even then, be careful. There may be little green noses of perennials or bulbs lurking under the leaves and you won’t want to damage them by putting a plank on them.

 

I’ve had snowdrops up and blooming since March, as I do every year. By April I have lots of bulbs blooming: crocus, glory-of-the-snow, scilla or squill (a deep purple early bloomer), winter aconite (a bright yellow, short-stemmed beauty) and early daffodils. If you don’t have enough bulbs blooming, imagine where they might go, and put plant labels there for fall planting. A south-facing hillside bed will produce blossoms up to 3 weeks before a north-facing bed.

 

I plant 100 tulips as cut flowers every year. If you planted some last fall, and have deer in the neighborhood, you may be disappointed to see them eaten just as they are starting to bloom. I prevent this by surrounding and covering my tulip bed with chicken wire before that happens. I plant my tulips in the vegetable garden each fall, and treat them as annuals.

 

Once your lawn has dried out, it will need a good raking to clean up the winter debris. I like to wait until the lawn has greened up a bit before raking. I don’t want to rake a dormant lawn as it would be easy to damage it with a brisk raking. Think of your lawn as individual plants growing very close together, not as one big green plant. They compete with each other and with crabgrass and weeds. A sprinkling of good compost will improve your soil, giving the lawn a better place to thrive.

 

I recommend reducing the size of most lawns. Think of a lawn as an area rug, not wall-to-wall carpeting. That will allow you to have a bigger vegetable garden and more places for native trees, shrubs and perennials that will support pollinators and birds. Do you know that caterpillars are essential food for baby birds? We need to provide flowers and trees that the butterflies and moths recognize and use – our natives.

 

Raised beds are easier to weed and harvest

I recommend raised beds for the vegetable garden, but you don’t have to build or buy wooden boxes for raised beds. When the soil has dried out, loosen it with a garden fork, and then use a short-tined rake to drag soil from walkways onto your designated beds to raise them up six inches or so. A 30-inch wide bed is ideal, it’s wide enough for roots to spread far and wide, yet you will be able to reach all parts for weeding.

 

Adding compost to your soil every year will improve it greatly over time. An inch of compost works wonders if you do it every year. Buy it in bulk if you have access to a pickup truck, or buy bags if you don’t. And for my tomatoes? I always add a shovel of compost in every planting hole and stir it in well with my favorite weeding tool, the CobraHead weeder. (www.CobraHead.com). Compost provides not only essential minerals in small quantities, it greatly improves soil texture and its ability to hold water in dry times.

 

Some people hate weeding, some love it. Either way, it has to be done. Start before the weeds get big. Perennial weeds like dandelions or thistles will already have deep roots. Annual weeds will be tiny, but numerous. I believe the best tool for either is the CobraHead weeder. Its curved metal digging tip can loosen the soil around deep roots, and help you pull from below with the tool while your other hand tugs on the top. Pull gently, slowly. You don’t want to snap off the root, as it will just start growing as soon as you walk away. Annual weeds you can loosen by scuffing the soil lightly.

 

As you plan your garden, think about buying organically certified starter plants and seeds. Why? Ordinary seed growers feed their plants with liquid fertilizer every day. That means that the plants don’t have to work as hard as organically raised plants to get the minerals they need. Organic practices promote longer roots to get the nutrition needed by the plants. If you are going to grow organic food, you will do best with organic starter plants.

 

Organic seed producers have to deliver seeds for plants that will not be protected from diseases and pests with chemicals. They have to tough. Lastly, buying organic seeds and plants supports organic farmers. They are working hard to protect the environment by avoiding chemicals. Pay a little bit more if you can, and buy organic.

 

And remember: gardening is supposed to be fun. Don’t work so hard you get blisters and a sore back. Garden a little every day. 

 

Henry can be reached at henry.homeyer@comast.net or PO Box 364, Cornish Flat,NH 03746. 

Filed under Article · Tagged with raised beds, watering wand

Vegetable Gardening

              Certainly the weather is, year after year, a source of much consternation for gardeners. It’s too dry! (May). It’s too wet! (June). It’s too hot! Too cold! People seem to be delighted to complain about the weather. Me? I’m generally pleased by it all. What curve ball will Mother Nature throw at us next?

Despite the yearly weather variations, some things in the garden never change. We must thin our root crops, pull weeds, mulch. We need to pick off potato bugs on our plants, and remove their orange egg masses on the underneath sides of the leaves. We need to pick slugs and snails on the cool, moist days.

One of the most tedious jobs in the vegetable garden is thinning. Baby beets crowd each other, no matter how carefully we planted them. Carrots compete with their brothers and sisters for light, water and soil nutrients. It’s time to get down on your knees and get to work, thinning.

Thinning and weeding is important

         I was recently talking to a gardener who starts her beets indoors in flats in March or April, and then divides them up and plants them individually, properly spaced. Hmm. That would certainly eliminate the thinning problem. I’ll have to try that next year.

         Carrots seeds are tiny, so spacing them well at planting time is difficult and time consuming. By now, carrots should be an inch apart. Later, by the end of July, carrots need more space – but the thinnings can be eaten, a reward I relish.

         Some years ago I saw prize-winning carrots that were 18 inches long on display at the Tunbridge World’s Fair in Tunbridge, VT. I was flabbergasted. I made note of the grower’s name and tracked him down. He is Joey Klein, an organic gardener in Plainfield, VT with a farm on the Winooski River. He gave me good tips on how to grow long carrots, and they worked. You can start a new bed of carrots now for fall eating and storage.

         Joey grows carrots in wide raised beds, each bed about 36 inches wide and mounded up about 6 inches above the walkways. He adds lots of organic matter to the soil, especially good, mature compost. He likes to say that he harvests sunshine. His carrots and broccoli turn sunshine into food. The soil he started with was good alluvial soil that has good drainage and texture – and few rocks, a bonus for anyone who wants long, straight carrots.

         If you want long luscious carrots, buy a variety that is destined to be long. Joey uses “Sugarsnax 54” from Johnny’s Selected Seeds. I use seed from Renee’s Garden Seeds, a package of mixed orange and yellow carrots called “Sunshine Orange and Yellow” that gives me huge, long carrots, especially the yellows. Mine are not as long as Joey Klein’s, but are routinely 12 inches long.

         I find growing long carrots in a wood-sided raised bed with 8-inch sides allows me to create a custom soil just right for carrots. I use a 50-50 mix of topsoil and compost, mixing my garden soil with compost I buy from a local guy who buys cow barn waste and turns it into light, fluffy compost. A box 40 inches wide will grow 3 rows of carrots separated by 15 inches and with 5 inches of space from the walls.

         If you are not handy with tools, Gardeners Supply Co (www.gardeners.com or 888-833-1412) sells metal corners that will help you to assemble a nice bed in just a few minutes. Their raised bed corners are sturdy and square, and all you have to do is slide in the 2-by-8’s and screw the lumber in place (a screwgun helps make that job easy).

Metal brakcets to make garden box

You can set the box you build right on your lawn, fill it up and plant! The lawn will die where you place your bed, and by the second year carrots will grow right down into the soil beneath the bed (the first year, they may grow down to the lawn, then turn sideways). Raised beds are great for rainy summers, as they drain well.

         To get those big carrots, keep the soil well watered in dry times. Sprinkle some organic fertilizer in the row when you plant, and again 6 weeks later. That second application should be alongside the carrots; scratch it into the soil with a hand tool. Keep out weeds, and thin the seedlings as mentioned above.

         Elsewhere in the garden I have removed the row covers from my cukes, zucchini and winter squash. I cover them to keep off the striped cucumber beetles off the young plants, but now the plants are big enough to survive some munching by beetles. When the blossom appear they need pollination by insects in order to produce fruit.

By the way, vine crops like zucchini produce flowers that are either male or female, and the boys appear first. So don’t despair if you don’t get any zukes at first. The ladies will be on their way soon.

We need to visit our vegetable gardens every day – and do a few acts of service for our plants. If we keep up with it all, we are deemed good gardeners and will, most likely, be rewarded with a bountiful harvest.

Henry can be reached at P.O. Box 364, Cornish Flat, NH 03746. Please include a self-addressed stamped envelope if you want a reply. Or e-mail him at henry.homeyer@comcast.net.

Copyright © 2014 Henry Homeyer

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