Time to bring a chair outside and sit a spell
Bright flowers and sweet fragrances in the garden tell us spring has arrived. Time to pull a chair into the sun and enjoy the show. You may want to hold off on those garden parties, though, with rain still possible in March. No jobs are pressing, so savor the flowers of your labors, if not the fruits. Those come later.
Plant perennials
It’s a great time to plant perennials, for their flowers or their foliage. They add complexity and variety to a garden and don’t get too big, generally rising less than 3 feet high. Many are in bloom at nurseries, so you can see what their various flowers look like. If planted right away, they will be established and growing before the stressing heat of summer.
Spring-flowering perennials include alstroemeria, bearded iris, coral bells, euphorbia, hellebore, lamb’s ears, Santa Barbara daisy, Swan River daisy and true geraniums. For summer bloomers, try agapanthus, coreopsis, daylily, penstemon, salvias and verbenas. Asters (A. frikartii does particularly well), Japanese anemone, Mexican marigold, liatris and swamp sunflower won’t flower until fall.
Salad bowl
It’s a mite early to plant tomatoes and other warm season vegetables, even though nurseries are stocking them. Instead, plant fast-growing salad greens and smaller vegetables such as carrots, beets and green onions, all of which do well in the home garden -- and in pots. The seeds will sprout quickly in March.
Raised beds are best for these small vegetables because they like good soil and drainage and don’t get trampled.
Snail patrol
As the weather warms, snails awake and head for the youngest, tastiest greens. You can staple special copper strips (available at nurseries) to raised beds that will exclude slugs and snails. There’s nothing worse than finding an unexpected guest in your dinner salad.
Protect other vulnerable plants with nontoxic iron phosphate baits such as Sluggo or traditional poison baits containing metaldehyde. Don’t use metaldehyde near edibles, and put it only where dogs can’t eat it. Some forms are supposedly less appealing to dogs.
Sprinkle baits in places where snails and slugs hide, such as in ivy or among clumps of iris.
Another solution: Get up early in the morning and hunt them down, squishing or crunching them with a long closet dowel or stick. Or wear thick gloves and squash
them.
Camellia culture
Because they are tough, surprisingly drought resistant and quite long-lived, camellias are perhaps our most useful shrub in the shade, especially on the dark north side of a house. They are best planted while in bloom, which works out nicely: You can see the flowers before putting them in the ground. One full inch of the root ball should stick above ground. If this crown becomes covered with soil after the camellia settles, rot could kill it.
Fertilize established plants with an acidic fertilizer. Cottonseed meal is a favorite organic. The best time to shorten or thin camellias is immediately after they flower.
If buds are a bust
Some camellia buds “bullnose” and never open, eventually becoming sticky and wet looking. The cause may be the weather or overhead sprinkling. Petal blight is similar; veins in the petals darken and turn to mush when rubbed together. The only practical way to stop both problems is prevention. Be careful when watering and, in the case of petal blight, keep fallen blooms raked up and renew mulches after the last petals fall.
