The busiest season for many gardeners, make sure you don’t miss anything by following this spring gardening checklist.
- Top-dress and re-seed the lawn. Once the warmer temperatures start and rainfall wakens up the lawn, top-dress and fertilize to choke out weeds.
- Harden off seedlings. Toughen up your seedlings by acclimatizing them to being outside. Only transplant them into your garden after threat of frost has past.
- Amend the soil in your planting beds. This simply means adding more of the good stuff- eg.- compost, zeolite, peat moss, and/or manure. This will help your plants to thrive and makes planting easier.
- Give your flowerbeds a fresh new edging by running an edger or spade around the perimeter. Consider installing lawn edging to make mowing easier.
- Install a rain barrel to collect runoff from eaves troughs and use this to water your plants.
- Plant tomato and pepper plants once soil temperatures reach 17 degrees Celsius.
- Fertilize daffodils, crocuses, and tulips after flowering. Cut back expired blossoms.
- Prune spring-flowering shrubs, such as forsythia and lilacs, right after they finish blooming.
- Divide mature perennials such as phlox, stonecrop, iris, and beebalm as needed.
- Stake all tall perennials such as peonies, delphiniums, and bellflowers.
- Visit our greenhouse! New varieties of annuals sell out quickly.
- Shrub roses will now be showing winter die-back. Prune the branches just below the visible dieback.
- Take advantage of free gardening seminars and trade shows at this time of year.
Click here for a printable Spring Gardening Checklist.