Anchorage Daily News

This is the big weekend: three days when most Southcentralians start to plant outdoors. There should be emphasis on "start." There is a lot to discuss, so forgive me for not spending much time on "hardening off" other than to warn those who don't know it that indoor-grown plants need a week outdoors in the shade, protected from the wind, before planting. The time allows them to be gradually introduced to ultraviolet light and wind. Be warned: It is better to wait to plant until the hardening-off process is over than to plant this weekend.

That said, a new word or two on cleaning the gardens and containers. Traditional advice is to clean up all the dead stuff and take it out of the perennial beds as well as annual and vegetable gardens. As for containers, it is advised to start with new soil.

Both pieces of advice are off-base. Just like rototilling (which is a no-no, by the way), cleaning up (and out) the garden alters the ability of the microbes and other members of the soil food web to do one of their jobs -- in this case, feeding your plants.

In theory, if you never took anything out of your gardens -- never cut a flower for a vase or removed the dead stalks in fall or spring, never harvested a single potato or broccoli head -- then you wouldn't have to fertilize. All those beautiful peonies you took inside -- the broccoli too -- would have wilted, fallen and added to the carbon base required to keep the web of life rolling along. But we do remove, so to garden we have to put carbon back into the soil.

My new advice? Leave as much of last year's garden as you can in the garden this year. Leave those old roots in the soil. They are going to decay and will feed this year's crops. If you must cut off the stalks of spent delphinium or raspberries or what have you, then cut them into 4- to 6-inch pieces and leave them around their mother plant. Why remove them away from the soil they were meant to feed? Why do gardeners so often buck the natural cycle that if allowed to continue would make gardening easier and gardens healthier?

HEALTHY SOILS

The same is true for most containers.

First, you surely can use last year's soil, especially if you have been staying free of chemical fertilizers and provided there is enough organic matter in it and added to it. Why remove the old tomato roots, which are organic matter and full of nutrients last year's plant didn't get to use. And why not cut up those stalks left from last year and use them to mulch this year's plants? Likewise, the remnants of last year's petunias and other annuals in boxes and containers are food, not waste.

Think about it. These plants were growing long before gardeners started cleaning up after them. Hmmm. And no one ever replaces the soil beneath the redwoods. Not once. Hmmm, again. Best of all, teaming with microbes results in less work, greater sustainability and fewer backbreaking chores like rototilling and cleaning up dead plants.

Next, ground soils are still cool. Covering vegetable and even flower beds with a clear painter's tarp will increase the heat, but it's a lot of work and plastic. Instead, wait and plant vegetables on the last day of the three-day weekend. Get the soil damp a couple of days earlier so it can warm up after the bath of cold tap water. Maybe this is the year for a hot-and-cold water setup for watering outdoors.

When you do plant, dip everything that goes into the vegetable and annual beds in endo-mycorrhizal fungi just before planting. Messenger is compatible, and so is aerated compost tea.

DON'T FORGET THE LAWN

The lawn will be calling this weekend as the Sirens called Ulysses. You must resist the temptation to do much other than clean it up a bit and give it an inch or two of water. Water. This is all it needs. This is the weekend to set up a traveling lawn sprinkler system: a long hose and a sprinkler that travels along it. You can water your entire lawn in one session. Your lawn isn't going away, and you will have to water it this year and next and into the future. Get a more automated system now, at the start of the season.

It is warm enough to put down organic foods like soybean meal, Arctic Gro natural, fish meals and the like, but again, I advise waiting to see how things look after a week or so of watering. If you do put down organic microbe food, do it on Monday afternoon; these can smell for the first day or so.

If you are so inclined, and I surely wish you weren't, it is too early to put down chemical fertilizers and it is not warm enough to use chemical weed-and-feed products. Wait until the lawn greens up and has had its first mowing before you decide whether to feed. As for the weeding by chemical, read the labels and look for the bit about how warm soil and lawn temperatures need to be. Then wash your hands, put on gloves and hand-attack those first dandelions. I like the Fiskars UpRoot tool, which works best after a good rain or watering.

Wear gloves, stretch often, drink water and, above all, have fun this weekend.

Jeff Lowenfels is a member of the Garden Writers Hall of Fame. You can reach him at gardenerjeff.googlepages.com or by joining the "Garden Party" radio show from 10 a.m. to noon Saturdays on KBYR 700 AM.

Garden calendar

• SHOP IN THE GARDEN: The Alaska Botanical Garden Nursery and Gift Shop will be open from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday for ABG members only and from noon to 4 p.m. for the public. Become a member now at www.alaskabg.org. You can also join on the spot that day.

Delphiniums: The delphinium-defoliating caterpillars are back! Hand-pick them and apply any product with Bt in it -- do so right away.

• TREES AND SHRUBS: Take advantage of bare-root sales. Apply "ecto" mycorrhizal mixes to roots before planting. This is different from the endo suggested for annuals and vegetable starts. Garden calendar

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