Living in Northern New Jersey

In addition to cleaning up flower beds and shrubs, a big part of my garden is lawn. There is only one thing to do with that and it is to rake, rake and rake more. Besides leaves and twigs from the winter months, the most important thing is to rake out the dead grass and thatch. Removing the dead leaves and thatch allows the healthy green grass to show through and thrive. After raking, I will use a garden spreader to add puverized lime to adjust the pH befoe seeding. A good time to add lime is before it rains so that the lime i washed into the soil. Not to forget about a good pair of garden gloves, I like the PIP WA4215A-AMZ Brahma Men’s Large Glove Leather, Palm Grey, 3-Pack. Leather work gloves are great for protecting your hands from prickly branches and things you don’t want to touch with bare skin (…if you know what i mean…biologicals: dead animals, live animals, poop, bugs). You can double up with a cotton garden glove and wear the leather work glove as an outter layer, this works particularly well. The leather gloves last a while, I usually leave them out in the rain to get clean and dry them on fence post in the sun, usually I will get a couple of seasons out of a pair.

Rake, rake, rake! I put down about fifty pounds of pulverized lime with a small garden spreader on the front lawn, It looked like a bit afterwards, but luckily the next few day the rains washed it into the soil and the grass gre in tall and green, just about ready for the first lawn cutting. Also I have been throwing around alot of sun/shade grass seed.

As soon as the winter snow is gone from your garden, its time to inspect your landscaping for winter damage and make a check list for an early spring cleanup.  the advantage to starting early is that weeds and undesirable plants are not yet starting to grow. If you have perennials that bloom early, that is where you want to concentrate your first efforts with an eye toward protecting new growth. if you have a large garden, its a good idea to break it up into manageable sections that can be tackled in several two or three hour tasks.
My garden is approximately 8000 square feet about equally divided between lawn and shrub/flower beds. Early blooming plants include lilacs, azaelea, two dogwood trees and some large irises. These are the areas I will work on first, I chose to start with the azaelea plants first, so i grabbed my garden gloves and rake and empty trash barrel and set to it.  I raked all the dead leaves. removed small trees/large weeds growing within the azaeleas.  In this area is an overgrown lilac.  Lilacs need to be cut back quite a bit and mine had not been trimmed in years and grew to about twenty feet tall!  generally you should cut branches two inches or more in diameter.  At first, I was going to just trim the lilac overhang atop the azaelea.  A tree brach fell on the lilac bush and drove it into the azaeleas.  The branches that needed cutting were approximately four to six inched in diameter, so i decided to cut them back nearly to ground level using a tree saw.
I will revisit the lilac and trim more, Rome wasn’t built in  day afterall, probably not good to stress the plant too much at once. Next was the Flag Irises bed, green shoots are just begining to appear and since this flower bed is in a corner bordered by large rocks, it collected a great deal of leaves. There is also some Virginia Creeper that has grown in the are so i removed as much as possible with hedge shears.

Early Spring is a good time to start your seeds indoors, especially vegetable that have long grwoing seasons and flowers for early blooms).   I start tomatoes and eggplant in aluminum trays and make pots from newspaper using a potmaker.  I bought a bag of miracle grow potting mix and burpee seeds and set to work. Try to keep your hands very clean washing with soap and water when working with seeds and avoid handling the seeds directly.  This will help prevent mold or yeasts growing in your pot. First I form the pots from newspaper, then fill approximately 3/4 full with potting soil and line the pots in the tray. When the tray is full, I wet the pots and soil with water. Then I carefully sprinkle three to five seeds per pot directly from an opened seed envelope.  after the seeds are added to the pots, i use a watering can with a diffuser so as not to disturb the soil and seeds.
Then the seed trays are placed in the warmest room in the house to germinate, they do not need sunlight yet so a sunny window or lights are unnecessary. Within about two weeks, your seeds should be growing and will need light.

Starting tomatoes by the middle of March should result in July fruit.  I also start a tray of flowers too,  this year I planted zinnias, snapdragons and poppies.  Zinnias are the easiest flowers to grow from seed that i have found. The seeds are large and easy to handle and the flowers are large and colorful.  Zinnias grow tall and fill a garden with color. Marigolds are alos easy to grow for the same reasons. Zinnia and Marigold flower produce seeds that are easy to harvest when closing the garden for winter and can be use to grow next years garden.

the first planting of seed trays went so well, the seedlings are about two inches tall and are in a sunny window growing, I decided to make more seed trays with Bell Peppers, NUMEX Hot Peppers and Marigolds. Its a rainy day, so no outside work today, so I am making more pots out of newspaper with my wooden pot maker. So i filled an aluminum cooking tray with 24 pots each filled a little les than full. Then I water the soil to moisten it with a watering can with a diffuser. Next I carefully add three to five seeds per pot. Lastly, I use a tablespoon of soil to cover each pot and water again with the watering can/diffuser. The trays I bought today from shoprite had clear plastic covers and I put the trays in my laundry room which is the warmest room in the house.

The Marigolds popped up within a few days, whereas the hot peppers sprouted about two weeks after planting and the bell peppers have still not sprouted. The bell pepper seeds were a few years old, but i expected a few to germinate. Seeds packaged for the current season have high germination rates and depending on storage, the seed pack’s germination rate will drop over time. I generally go by the rule that seeds were found in egyptian pyramids that were stil viable so a seed pack a few years old shouldd have a germination rate of at least 30% but I could be wrong but I don’t have a pyraamid to sstore my seeds in (yet).