It always takes a few weeks after the soil in containers is warm enough to plant for the yard soil to warm up so you can plant in it. It's finally happened. Go forth and plant those vegetable gardens. Flower away! We are officially in Alaska's outdoor growing season.
This has equipment implications. First, the rule is you need to be able to reach every part of your yard with a hose. And these hoses are not allowed to leak. Washers in good shape? If not, replace them. Same thing for the hoses themselves. Toss them if you can't repair them this weekend.
Quick connects belong on every hose and every watering tool. These allow you and your gardening minions to simply snap sprinklers, watering wands and the like on and off the hose. No twisting and no leaks. No need for pliers because someone really screwed things on too tight.
There are plastic connectors, usually orange or green. They only fit on like colors so get the same kind for the whole system. Or you can get the brass couplers. These are more expensive, but last forever. Note that some of the brass female ends shut off the water flow when uncoupled from their male counterparts. This can be good if you want the water off, but sometimes you want to use the hose without a tool and then you're out of luck. It might make sense to just use on and off valves at the end of each hose and attach the coupler to it.
Watering tools definitely need to be in shape as well. No leaks. The same washers that you need for hoses fit these. Start keeping them in the same place so everyone on your work team knows where they are all season long. And make sure you have at least one water break for your flower and vegetable watering chores. This will create a gentle, shower flow instead of hitting the plants with 60 pounds per second pressurized water. Nurseries and hardware stores carry them. They last forever.
I always advise readers with yards to get a traveling sprinkler. This is a small, toy-size tractor gadget that moves along the watering those as it sprinkles the lawn. They run around 80 dollars. If you add a timer to the faucet, you can turn the system on and water the entire lawn without once moving the sprinkler. (Just make sure you turn it to neutral -- it has a fast and slow speed as well -- before moving it anywhere by hand.) Mine is one of my favorite tools.
Since I started with a mention of warming soils, note the temperature of the water flowing from your outdoor faucet. Ours is from a well and comes out at about 40 degrees. Yours will be in the same range. Consider an outdoor hot water faucet so you can mix cold and hot water and not continually reduce the temperature of your soils or shock your plants. Of course, you can always let water warm in a big barrel and then use a watering can.
And, speaking of soils in the yard, no rototilling unless you are putting in a first-time garden bed. How do you plant seeds? In small holes made with a dowel or finger or in a furrow eked out by drawing a stick down the bed. Plants? Use a trowel. The point is you don't have to destroy the entire garden's soil food web by turning over the soil to plant. No one rototilled the Chugach National Forest. How did it grow in all that glacial soil without it?
Finally, if you are dealing with your soils, then you need to mulch. This will keep down weeds and feed the microbes that feed your plants. Use brown mulches for perennial beds. Put green mulches on annuals and vegetables. I treat tomatoes as a perennial because they are, so they get a couple of inches of leaves as mulch.
Mulch isn't for gardens only. There are no bare soils in nature. That means you should mulch everything, be it your tomato plants, cannabis plants or sweet peas.
Jeffs Alaska Garden Calendar
Alaska Botanical Garden: First, mark your calendars for these events. You can get more information at www.alaskabg.org as well as membership information. This is only a sampling of this summer's events. Note the plant sale is open to members first for an hour. Join today.
May 23 – Plant Sale and Alaska Public Gardens Day
June 25 – A Midsummer Gala in the Garden
June 27 – Anchorage Heritage Garden Ribbon Cutting Ceremony
June 27-28 – Garden and Art Fest
July 10 – BeerGarden
Delphinium defoliators: These fat caterpillars eat up your delphiniums. They are attacking them now. Spray with a Bacillus product you can get from your favorite nursery. Or hunt twice a day and crush with your fingers. They are usually wrapped up in a leaf. Hurry.
Harden off: Just because you can plant anything now doesn't mean you don't still need to harden off. Really!