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Prepare Your Garden for Spring

It’s finally that time of year! Spring is almost here! It’s time to prepare your garden for another growing season. 

Hopefully, through the winter you’ve been staying on top of things like deadheading and pruning that way you have a head start on cleanup tasks, but if you haven’t now is the time to start!

Remove old flower heads from perennial plants, living weeds, damaged branches, and older mulch and grass clippings. Most of these things can be placed in a compost heap to become incorporated into the soil. If it is already well-composted in place you can use organic matter to work into the soil and increase nutrient levels. You want to expose the soil so you can prepare it for flowers and other plants. 

At this point you can add an organic fertilizer along with the older mulch, working the soil until it’s all mixed in. This will ready the garden bed for spring planting, and giving it the nutrients it needs to support your flowers and vegetables. This will also help to loosen up the soil which is important after being compacted all winter long. While you’re digging up the soil, it’s the perfect time to perform a soil test to see what your pH levels are and whether or not you need to make adjustments. Your local cooperative extension can help with this. 

If you’re going to be using raised bed planters early spring is a good time to purchase soil specifically formulated for raised beds. While it may be too early to plant most crops, being prepared for warmer weather never hurts. If you decide to plant cool weather crops like lettuce, asparagus, and Brussel sprouts, be sure to cover crops with a frost protectant on nights that may still be extremely cold. 

Finally, once you’ve gotten your beds prepared and your garden ready for next month’s planting you can spend some time dividing up perennials—like bearded iris, hostas, and daylilies. These perennials can often begin to crowd each other out over time, causing their blooms to get smaller and more sparse as time goes on. By splitting them you give them more room to grow. The most important thing to remember with splitting plants is that your garden tools must be sterilized with alcohol first. You can spread disease and pests from one plant to another if you don’t keep your tools clean. 

The Best Early Spring Flowers

We’ve just entered early spring and while it’s still pretty chilly most days a lot of us have turned our thoughts to spring gardening and the best spring flowers to plant to brighten up the yard. Flowers bloom at different times, so in this blog, we’ll cover some of the best plants for the early spring season. 

The location of your garden bed will determine the best types of plants to place there. Do you have full sun or part shade? Take note of that before going over the following list of spring-blooming plants. 

Creeping phlox is a wonderful addition to any spring garden and does well in all types of soil, so long as they are in full sun to partial shade. They produce a cascade of pretty white flowers, pink flowers, or lavender flowers depending on the plants chosen. Creeping phlox will come back year after year and will spread. They’re perfect for walls and rock gardens. 

Lenten roses, or hellebores, are tolerant of partial and full shade. They come in a wide variety of colors including purple, red, yellow, green, and blue and are one of the more popular blooming perennials. They are relatively drought tolerant once established. 

Daffodils, Hyacinths, Tulips, and Crocus are great spring bulbs to plant on the first day of spring. If you are looking for plants that have brightly colored flowers and are early to bloom they can’t be beaten. As a bonus, their uniquely shaped flowers attract bees and hummingbirds to your early spring garden. 

Have a damp area to fill? Try the primrose. It comes in a variety of colors and is a wonderful early bloomer. 

By planting these gorgeous bloomers your garden bed will be a riot of color and a welcome change from the drab winter weather.

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