Gardening can be so much fun this time of year. The key to making it fun is to pace yourself – starting soon and doing a little at a time, rather than waiting and then being inundated with too much to do all at once. Some ideas:

Tidy up. Cut back old, dead stalks of perennial flowers; dig or pull out weeds or any remaining spent vegetables; rake debris off the lawn, and prune away dead or diseased branches from trees.

Most in need of pruning are shrubs, but wait to prune spring-flowering shrubs such as lilac, forsythia and mock orange until just after they finish blooming or you’ll be cutting off stems that would have bloomed.

Except for formal shrubs, which get sheared, shrubs respond best to loppers; use this tool to cut some of the oldest stems, which no longer flower well, right down to the ground.

Your plants may be hungry. Ideally, get a soil test to find out what fertilizers might be needed.

If you’ve enriched your soil over the years by digging in or mulching with plenty of organic materials, such as compost and leaves, your soil likely has plenty of nutrients. Otherwise, spread some organic or synthetic fertilizer over planted areas according to rates specified on the package.

To make nutrients more available to plants, you may need to adjust soil acidity with either ground limestone, to decrease acidity, or sulfur, to increase acidity. The soil test will also help you here but, again, if you’ve been enriching your ground with abundant organic materials over the years, acidity is less likely to be out of kilter.

Finally, the most fun: Planting! Who can resist the lure of all those colorful flowers and potted plants offered for sale in spring. Do try to keep your wits about you, making sure the site is suitable for any plants you set in the ground – and envisioning the woody plants you may see there after twenty or more years of growth.

source : www.wilmingtonstar.com By Lee Reich,