Gardening stuff to do

January

• Design your garden or landscape and determine the number of species needed.

February

• Pull out weeds before they get big.
• Clean out bird house, and make repairs.
• Sharpen and clean gardening tools.
• Prune summer flowering shrubs, vines, and crape myrtle.

March

• Its time to sow seeds indoors.
• Remove from cold storage potted bulbs for Easter.
• Rototill the vegetable garden at least two weeks before planting potatoes, peas and asparagus by the end of the month.
• Remove excess straw from strawberry bed. Leave only a light dusting of straw to protect the strawberries from direct contact with the soil.
• Prune butterfly bush.
• Rake away leaves and debris and clear dead plants from beds.
• Plant earliest cool weather crops.
• Prune summer-flowering roses (Spring flowering roses should only be pruned after flowering).
• Mulch perennials.

April

• Mow old annuals and perennials with the mower set high. Leave the roots.
• Plant container grown or balled and burlapped trees and shrubs.
• Spread an inch of compost over the flower garden.
• Divide perennials and grasses.
• Last chance to prune summer roses.
• Paint nail polish on all cut rose canes thicker than a pencil.
• Plant onions, peas, potatoes, parsnips beets, and carrots.
• Prune hydrangea.
• Cut out old gray stems of forsythia after blooming.
• Plant perennials, herbs and less hard cool crops.
• Pinch mums, keeping it three inches high.

May

• Last chance to prune crape myrtle.
• Remove seed heads from tulips, narcissus, and hyacinths.
• Set the lawn mower to at least 3.5 inches to crowd out weeds an improve turf.
• Plant corn, beans, squash, and cucumbers.
• Transplant annuals in the flower and vegetable garden.
• Prune spring bloomers including spring flowering roses, azaleas, rhododendrons, and andromeda, mountain laurel, forsythia, weigela, spirea, viburnum, flowing crab apples, lilacs, and cherry laurel after blooming.
• Plant your full garden after May 10th.
• Pinch your mums, keeping them three inches high. It prevents them from blooming in the summer season, and creates a thicker mum, for fall color.

June

• Dig and divide daffodil bulbs.
• Install drip irrigation.
• Start training tomato plants to grow upright on stakes, or trellises.
• Prune weigela as forsythia.
• Fertilize roses and spray for mildew and black spot.
• Stake plants before they grow to big.
• Pinch your mums to three inches high.

July

• Hand prune, yews, hollies, photinia, juniper, and viburnums.
• dead head herbaceous plants such as delphiniums, and peonies.
• Prune petunias, and nasturtium to keep them flowering.
• Prune hedges wider at the bottom.
• Kill Bermuda grass with Roundup keep edges well trimmed. cut back with an edging iron those that have spread.
• Cut back mint thyme, and lemon balm.
• Water lawn and flowers in the morning to avoid wilting in the heat of the day, and to prevent mildew and root rot during the night.
• Pinch your mums to three inches high no later than July 15th, than do not pinch again. Let grow.

August

• Top-seed lawn to fill in bare spots.

September

• Divide peonies, and iris now for more spring blooms.
• Plant tulip, narcissus, crocus, hyacinths, and grape hyacinths. Do the same in pots for Easter.
• Top-dress lawn with compost at the rate of two cubic yard per 1,000d square feet.
• Start a compost pile using garden waste.
• Plant mums for autumn color.
• Service chain saw.
• Plant daffodils, and crocus for spring flowering.

October

• Mulch azaleas with compost or fertilized them with Holly Tone.
• Rake leaves under shrubs for mulch.
• Use excess leaves in compost. Mix old compost with new, and keep sprinkler working for wet compost.
• Kill bamboo and kudzu with Roundup.
• Make two applications two weeks apart at the recommended concentration.
• Plant pansies and ornamental cabbage for cool weather color.
• Fertilize azaleas and bluegrass or fescue lawns.
• Bring in Terra cotta pots, and bleach them to kill mold and store dry.
• Pinch dead heads of mums.

November

• Plant potted shrubs before they freeze.
• Clean garden with lawn mower.
• Cut back roses with in 18inches of the ground to prevent wind whipping of canes.
• Wet down compost pile weekly.

December

• Cut greens for holidays. an plunge them into a pail of 100 degree water.
• Spray evergreens decoration with two percent solution of horticultural oil or Plant Shine for brighter leaves.
• Move bay laurel plants and trees indoors.
• Force narcissus and amaryllis bulbs indoors.