If you have been following this column for any length of time, you know the rule: Once the birch leaves reach the size of squirrels’ ears, frosts end for the season. This means you can start to harden things off and even plant really hardy items like peas.
You may also remember that birch trees count the cold days so that they “know” when to open. Spring weather has little to do with the timing, but the countdown is just about over. One more week? Two?
There are plenty of things that you need to take care of as the season arrives. Start by very carefully pulling back the mulch which should be covering all your gardens. It acts as insulation and right now, we want the warmth to get into the soil from the top down. Pick up last year’s labels and stakes and walk away. Stay off your gardens until they really dry out.
After those birch leaves do appear, you will want to put mulch back so it can keep weeds down and provide nutrients for the plants we are finally going to get to plant outdoors. There are no bare soils in nature. Using mulch is one of the main tenets of organic gardening.
The rule when it comes to lawns is to keep off them when they are wet and then simply clean them up when they are dry. The proper method is to run winter debris over with the mower to mulch it up. This mulched debris is left on the lawn to feed the microbes that support it. All those spruce cones and strewn-about birch branches will return nutrients when they decay. Pulverizing them with a mower will make it easier for microbes to digest them.
Other than watering, the lawn rule continues: Do nothing until the lawn fully greens up. Don’t thatch; your lawn probably doesn’t need it. Last year’s dead surface grass is not thatch. It will decay away.
And do not apply fertilizer. This is the one that hangs people up. I say don’t even buy any. Spring lawn fertilizers are for suckers and looking at a brown lawn makes you so vulnerable to the finely honed advertising and sales. You have no idea if your lawn even needs feeding until it is up and growing. Once it greens up, and it will without any fertilizer, you can asses your lawn’s needs.
And second, the plain fact of the matter is mulching up winter’s debris and not bagging clippings when mowing will provide all the food the microbes feeding your lawn need. Of course, lawn fertilizer companies won’t tell you this. They have conditioned the American homeowner to willy-nilly dump nitrogen on lawns when spring arrives.
Listen to the “Teaming with Microbes” podcast:
This is also time to get your compost pile going. Turn your pile. Also, keep an eye out for neighbors who kindly bag up their yard debris and leave those bags on the curb. If there is not a dog in the yard, grab some of these to use for brown material in your compost pile later in the season, mulch and to start a new pile.
Indoors, don’t forget to expose your potatoes to light to get eyes growing. It is also time to get the kids and plant the big seeds, specifically, nasturtiums, sweat peas, canary bird vines, scarlet runner beans, peas, beans and edamame. These can go into individual containers and will be just the right size once transplanting time comes along. It won’t be long now.
Jeff’s Alaska gardening calendar:
Bird feeders: Take them down now. Bears!
Alaska Botanical Garden: Saturday, April 27 10 a.m.-5 p.m. See you at the Midtown Mall Spring Garden Show where you can shop ABG plugs, hardy perennials, and native plants to fill your garden.
Garden plan: It is best to make a rudimentary garden plan before you buy plants. How else are you going to make buying decisions?