It pains me to see customers spending hundreds of dollars on new plants and simultaneously refusing to spend a few more on a bag or two of compost and a box of starter fertilizer. These two items are not unnecessary “add-ons” that the retailer is just trying to add to the sale, they are critical components of a successful transplanting process - or as I like to refer to them as “plant insurance”. Unless you have phenomenal soil, you should always add compost and starter fertilizers when you are planting new plants. Here is why…
April is a floriferous month to be sure, but along with all those glorious rhodies, tulips, daffodils, flowering cherries and magnolias, there is also an amazing array of new foliage emerging from both evergreen plants as well as deciduous ones. Personally, I find these foliar displays just as exciting as the floral ones….
Something special happened in the garden this last week. We experienced the vernal equinox, a time when we receive exactly 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of night… Once we hit this spot, when our day lengths start to exceed our night lengths, we can expect to experience magical things happening in the garden…
We are blessed with an extended parade of flowering trees in our northwest spring. Starting in February, we get to enjoy the flowering plums and flowering pears followed by all sorts of flowering cherries and several forms of magnolias. But as we move closer to the end of April, the pickings can get slim. Fortunately, this is exactly when the flowering crabapples come into bloom…
The Golfing Gardener
Trevor Cameron
At some point each spring I have to pay homage to our Washington state flower, the Rhododendron. We are in the midst of April and heading towards May soon, which means that the glorious time of year has arrived for Rhodies to shine in all of our landscapes…