Completing the Work of Winter
As far as plants are concerned, winter is coming to a close. Look carefully at the garden and you will see signs of spring--the buds that are beginning to swell on fruit trees, the new shoots on roses, the slugs and snails that are beginning to wander about.
Look at this weekend as a time to finish up those jobs in the garden that can only be done while plants are dormant or nearly so.
Begin with the bare root planting of roses, fruit trees, berries, grapes or other plants that are at nurseries now. Many will already have begun to leaf out and they must be planted quickly.
The pruning of roses and fruit trees is next in importance, followed by fertilizing and spraying. Fertilizing roses now will guarantee strong new growth in the month ahead, and deciduous fruit trees like apricots and peaches must be fertilized before they flower. Any fertilizer will do. The easiest and safest to use is a general purpose, granular type with numbers like 10-8-8 on the package. Scatter the granular fertilizer about the base of the plant, covering all the ground that lies in the shadow of the plant. Use the amount recommended on the package. Then, with a steel rake, rough up the ground so the fertilizer is not simply sitting on the surface. If you want to fertilize bulbs or annual flowers (a good idea), use a faster-acting liquid fertilizer in a watering can.
Spraying the Trees
If you had curly leaves on your peach tree last year, or fruit with soft brown spots on it, you should spray the trees with a dormant oil containing lime sulfur. This controls both peach-leaf curl--a disease almost all peaches get in time--and brown rot, as well as any other diseases or pests hiding on the bare branches. Dormant oil sprays containing lime sulfur can only be used on leafless plants. For best results, stand atop a ladder and use a hose-end sprayer so the spray covers the tops as well as the bottoms of branches. If it gets on other plants that are not leafless, wash these off with a strong spray of plain water.
And speaking of pests, the warm, damp weather of last week brought out the slugs and snails that have been hibernating the past few months. To their delight they are going to find all of your fall-planted flowers and the bulbs that are just pushing up, so be sure to bait for them. Most snail baits need to be moist if they are to work, so the wet ground works to your benefit. Of course, rain washes the bait away, so try to bait right after it rains.
This is also the time to cut back perennials such as Japanese anemones, Shasta daisies and any others that have looked shabby all winter.
