Spring Ahead?  One can only hope.  It’s late March in Chicagoland and so much for the old motto that “March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb.”  No lamb I know of turns 19 degrees tonight and threatens to snow again mid-week.

Just a little setback, I say, and more like Chicagoland than I’m often willing to admit.  In James 5:7 it says, “See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop and how patient he is for the autumn and spring rains.”  I guess I’m not a farmer and I have a long way to go.  I’m getting impatient…which is why I have planted pots.  They come inside when it’s cold and travel outside on nice days.  It’s a way to enjoy spring even when the March lamb is delayed until April…or even May!

Inside, I’ve planted seeds of my cool season flowers like lobelia, ones which bridge the seasons like alyssum, and ones which seem to take forever to grow to a reasonable size such as impatiens and Brazilian vervain.  Some plants I won’t even try to grow from seed and I take cuttings instead from plants which I’ve overwintered: begonias, purple potato vine, ivy geranium, and landscape roses.

My tree rose, carefully wrapped and overwintered in my compost pile, now  has been unearthed, potted and is slowly being acclimated to the outdoors from the safety of my garage.  I don’t want it to come out of dormancy too quickly, nor do I want to leave it in the compost pile where it may leaf out and get damaged when I unwrapped it.  The timing was great!  The buds were swelling but did not leaf out.  I pruned away any dead stems from the graft union (which on a tree rose is at the top of the standard), potted it with a nice quality potting mix and gave it a small drink of half strength fertilizer with slightly higher Phosphorus and Potassium ratios so that it will help the rose to send out new roots which are more important right now than leaves.  By the time the weather improves, roots will be well established and I can feed it with a more balanced N-P-K ratio and get the leafing to be full and beautiful.  The last thing I did before bringing it into the garage was to spray it with a systemic all-in-one rose spray to give it an edge against any insects or diseases that may want to interfere with the growth of the plant.

Some of my plants are still hiding in the garage awaiting better weather: a lovely ‘Burgundy Cotton’ Crape Myrtle which I brought back on the airplane from Texas and some ornamental grasses that I use in pots.  They are not hardy here, so I consider my garage to be more of a hardiness zone like Arkansas.

Of course, it’s time to plant vegetable seeds now too.  I have a variety of heirloom tomatoes that I’ve started from seed.  Black Krim and Green Zebra are two varieties that we tried last year for the first time and were definite winners.  I am also partial to Sweet Tangerine and Jubilee since their color is spectacular, they are prolific producers, and they have proven to be more disease-resistant than many other varieties.  By the time warm weather arrives, these heat-lovers will be a suitable size to plant in my deck boxes.

This week, I’ll also be building a few trellises for my clematis that have outgrown their old ones.  I will install them before the clematis start to leaf out and begin vigorous growth very shortly…or so one can hope!  Stay tuned because Spring is ahead!

It’s mid-March and we’ve had our first real spring day!  Even the mailman commented that you can tell spring is here because Barb is in her garden.  I suppose there are worse things to be known for than that.

The land—dormant and under the shroud of snow—suddenly reveals its life with the first of the warm days.  I am reminded of Isaiah 35:1-2:  “The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom. Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom; it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy. The glory of Lebanon will be given to it, the splendor of Carmel and Sharon; they will see the glory of the LORD, the splendor of our God.”

I think there’s something of the splendor of God in every emerging sprout, the jiggle of the earthworm, and the singing of the cardinals.  I love spring.

Remember my tulips that I forced?  They’re in full bloom now.  I tucked some forsythia into some the vases to have a beautiful contrast of colors.  If you were to roll up a rainbow into a wheel, it’s what designers will call a color wheel.  It’s a useful tool for understanding how colors work together.  Purple and yellow are highly contrastive; opposites on the color wheel and therefore are your eye’s most natural color complements.   Anytime you use opposite colors, they will highlight each other.

Rose cones come off now.  With a careful eye to the weather forecast and a string of less frosty days ahead, I remove the rose cones before the buds “break” from within the canes.  If roses stay too long under the cones, the buds will break into tender leaf shoots and will be more susceptible to frost.  I still have a mound of mulch over the graft union (the place where the lovely variety was grafted onto the root stock).  I will be removing that soon too.

I’ve begun carefully raking the late falling willow leaves that blow into my flower beds, pruning away winter damage from some shrubs that don’t mind a haircut in the spring before their leaves emerge, and pulling garden grass which comes out easily when the ground is soft and moist.  It’s also easy to distinguish invading grass from look-alikes such as grape hyacinth and scilla foliage because of the way the roots are.  I like inspecting my plants while I do yard work so that I can develop a plan for getting ahead of (and preventing) problems and for preparing my yard for planting.

The snow isn’t completely gone from my yard, but my early spring bulbs (which are late this year because of snow cover) are coming up.  Snow crocus, snowdrops, winter aconite are among my favorites for cheering the heart.  Soon, the chinodoxa and daffodils will be blooming in warmer microclimates in my yard.  Not all the daffodils will flower outside though–some will come indoors to bloom.

And of course, pansies.  I didn’t want to tell the mailman, but I already have a few that I overwintered in my garage that are on my back deck warming themselves and readying to spring into action.

The days are getting longer; the angle of the sun is warming the earth; the snow is starting to melt; and I’m impatient for spring.  I am reminded of Genesis 1:14  where God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years.” 

There are many things God has graciously given to mark the seasons aside from the moon and sun and stars.  I look at the swelling buds of the maple trees and the dripping from the branches and I can tell the sap is running.  I look at the soil where the snow has melted and how it’s telling the robins that breakfast is served.  Even today’s rain instead of snow is a happy reminder that signs of hope are a gift from God.  Spring is that way.

It’s early March and my hyacinths that I brought in from their cold treatment are in full bloom, filling my kitchen with their lovely fragrance.  I wonder if my blooming gardenia is jealous.  The tulips (that I also cold-treated for 12 weeks) are slower to bloom.  I don’t mind since it is a progression: hyacinth, tulip, and then I will cut daffodils buds outside as they mature for bringing indoors.

Indoor checklist

I’m continuing to start seeds indoors.  I try not to start them so early that they become leggy before planting season.  Knowing the last frost date for my area of USDA zone 5 is May 15, I back-calculate to determine what seeds to start on any given week. 

Also indoors, I’m beginning to pot up cuttings of my Martha Washington geraniums so that they’ll be blooming happily from April through Mother’s Day until the weather begins to get hot.  I use fiberglass drywall tape to cover the hole in the bottom of a pot, add soil and pot up the cuttings. 

Martha Washington geraniums are cool season bloomers, but will continue blooming into the summer if sheltered from heat or full sun locations.  I took cuttings when I brought them in last fall which served 2 purposes: (1) it made the mother plant smaller and (2) provided ample stock for multiplying quantities.  I do the same with coleus which are easily started from cuttings.  I grow stock plants through the winter under lights, take cuttings for new plants, and harden them off when planting season arrives.

Also on the early March checklist is deer prevention. 

The winter has been long for the deer and they’re hungry.  There is still food for them in the woods behind our house and under the bird feeders, so they don’t need to eat my ‘Cardinal’ red-twig dogwoods, or my Spiraea.  Shortly my tulips and hyacinths outdoors will begin emerging.  It’s better prevent deer now—to nip their eating in the bud—before they nip my garden’s flower buds down to the ground.  Train deer now and you’ll reap benefits all season long.

Beginning now, I use Tree Guard taste repellent (available online) on anything I don’t want the deer to eat.  It’s highly bitter and cannot be used on edible materials, but it’s always perfect for ornamentals.  It works longer than any of the other taste-type deer repellents and can be sprayed directly on the plant.  As soon as the snow melts I will put Milorganite on the soil surface of flower beds as an odor-type repellent.  As with any fertilizer, I don’t apply it over the snow so that it won’t pool in low spots when melt occurs and burn the vegetation.

This combination of the two (taste and odor repellent) works better than either one alone.  Many old wives tales and folk remedies are floating around the Internet, but this approach has worked consistently for me for more than a decade.  Deer live in the woods behind me and I stick with what I know works.

Yard Cleanup

I love seeing the days get longer and knowing the ground is warming from the strength of the sun’s rays.  Actually, it’s just nice seeing the sun shining—it’s far too infrequent in Chicagoland winters.  I try to make hay while the sun shines…or at least clean up the yard.  Among my current yard clean up tasks are picking up sticks, pruning the winter damage that my shrubs sustained from the incredibly snowy winter, gently raking up the leaves and other debris accumulating in garden beds during the winter, and removing garden grass that always seems to pop up out of nowhere.

Two things I do not do: 

• I do not prune spring-flowering shrubs except to make a clean cut on already broken branches.  If azaleas, rhododendrons, lilacs, mock-orange, forsythia, flowering quince, viburnum, and select hydrangeas, etc. are pruned now, all the flower buds will be removed and you’ll have shrubs with no blooms. 
• I do not work the soil in the garden until it thaws and dries enough so I don’t ruin the texture of the garden.  The soil will feel like moist chocolate cake when it’s ready to be worked.

Thanks for enjoying my garden with me!  Check back often.  My garden updates will become more frequent as the season progesses.  And please feel free to leave comments or ask questions.  I welcome hearing from you.

 

Recently, I brought my tulip and hyacinth bulbs in from their 12 week cold treatment for forcing indoors.  They make beautiful and cheerful spring flower arrangements with their leaves and flower stalks arising from bulbs atop decorative pebbles in a glass vase.  Speaking of bulbs, soon the first of my outdoor bulbs will be emerging:  winter aconite, snowdrops, and early snow crocus.  Check out this page every month for my garden update.