Time of year to get your garden plan together

The reason this happens is because gardeners generally refuse to put together some form of rudimentary planting plan before going garden shopping. We buy based on our emotions.

Sometimes things work out. The colors you chose work or you get interesting texture in your garden. But more often than not your gardens end up resembling Jackson Pollock murals rather than a Sunset Magazine masterpieces.

Now don't misunderstand me. I am not suggesting you need to go out and spend a lot of money to hire a landscape architect. There is no need. Keep it very simple. You can do this yourself on the back of a paper bag if you want. Just rough out the shape of your property and make circles where you have or want gardens, trees or shrubs. Then list what you want in each circle and transcribe that list to a master list which you can take with you when you shop. This should take all of 15 minutes.

If you want to get fancy, use your digital camera and photograph garden areas. Print them out and draw on them. I have heard of people blowing up a Google Earth map of their yard, printing it and using it as a template. If you really want, there are some pretty neat computer assisted design programs. But again, it doesn't matter. Just have a plan. Know what you need.

It doesn't take very many days of no snow on brown lawns for folks to start asking about fertilizing. This is real simple. I have a rule to follow: Until your lawn greens up, all it needs is water. Once it greens up, then you decide if it even needs feeding.

If you insist on feeding your lawn nonetheless, it is imperative to understand that chemical lawn fertilizers are absorbed directly by the roots of the plant. So you are wasting your money if you feed plants that are not actively growing. (Worse are weed and feed products that require 60 degree temperatures on the lawn level. Of course, no one that reads this column would ever use them.)

Organic lawn foods feed the microbes and are the only way to go. These do not leach and can be put on any time. Still, it is best to follow the rule.

If you have an outdoor greenhouse, it is time to get it cleaned out and ready to go. It is a good idea to remove the remnants of last year's plants. Lots of these will be decaying and contain fungal spores so consider wearing a breathing mask. Once cleaned up, shut the door, make sure the fan is off and let things cook for a few days.

Similarly, it is time to clean out that tool shed or closet where you keep all your gardening items. Those of us that have gardened here for more than a year realize that things start to move very fast in the next few weeks and this is the time to get ready, not when you will have too many other competing gardening tasks.

So, gather up the gardening gloves, clippers and shears, trowels and other planting tools. Haul out the hoses and put the hose quick connects back on the outdoor faucets. (It's safe to attach hoses where I live but, just in case, all hose bibs and hoses need to have quick connects in case there's the need for a quick disconnect.)

If your lawn is dry, collect the debris and clean it up. Understand that modern gardeners follow a law of return: If it comes from the yard, it should be returned to it. Pile the big stuff around trees or under shrubs and run over the smaller twigs and leaves with the lawn mower sans bag. This is great microbe food for the lawn. Consider running over the piles or rows of mulch that you pulled back from perennial beds to allow the soil to warm up. This will make it more available to the soil microbes we want to encourage during the summer months. If it has been off the bed for a couple of weeks, you can rake it back onto the beds.

Finally, everyone should have a compost pile. This may not be the time to set one up, but it is the time to start gathering materials. To work, a pile needs a mixture of brown material which contains lots of carbon (leaves, twigs, chips) and green material that contains lots of nitrogen (grass clippings, green kitchen wastes, straw, hay). Getting green stuff during the summer is easy. Getting the brown is not. The solution is to stockpile some now. Gather up some of the remaining fall leaves or chip up fallen wood. Pick up bags of yard debris foolishly left on the curb by neighbors (who don't have dogs) who don't realize their worth.

Get going. It won't be long until we have birch leaves the size of a squirrel's ear and can safely plant outdoors.

Jeff Lowenfels is a member of the Garden Writers Hall of Fame. You can reach him at teamingwithmicrobes.com or by calling 274-5297 during "The Garden Party" radio show from 10 a.m. to noon Saturdays on KBYR AM-700.