This is a gardener’s most active time of year. Here are the tasks I was doing this past week. After getting our sprinkler system fixed, I finally fertilized the lawn with a 21-0-0 fertilizer.
I watered the lawn deeply before putting down the nitrogen and then watered it thoroughly afterward to keep the salts in the fertilizer from burning the grass. I fertilized my flowers too, hoping to encourage more prolific and longer lasting blooms. Any good flower food, or a 16-16-16 will work.
There are great organic or traditional products available. My preference is a water-soluble product I add to my watering can. I pruned the dead flowers off the forsythia right after they finished blooming to allow the wood for next year’s flower buds to develop.
I always seal each of the pruning cuts with white glue, like school glue, to keep the beneficial wasps from boring down into the canes to lay eggs. Otherwise, their boring tunnels kill off the stem. I’m pruning the finished lilac blooms too.
The rule of thumb is to prune spring flowering shrubs back right after blooming to get those all-important flower buds coming on this year’s growth for next year’s blooms. I pruned the dead branches in my old-fashioned wandering roses. I always seal every rose stem I cut with the glue for the same reason as I do the forsythia.
I also sterilize my shears between cuts with a spray bottle of isopropyl alcohol to prevent disease transmission. My irises are in bloom. To make the flowers furthest .
