The Garden Calendar

• Remove winter mulch.
• Replant frost-heaved  perennials.
• Prune shrubs grown for interesting summer leaves or winter stems.
• Cut back any perennial left for seeds for the winter birds.
• Clean up ground-cover beds and divide overcrowded plants to give them room.
• Add a layer of finished compost to your flowerbeds.
• Plant pansies and other cold-tolerant annuals.
• Sow seeds of hardy annuals and perennials outdoors.
• Add a new layer of mulch in your flower beds mixing in some of the winter mulch
• Repair the lawn by sewing grass seed or laying patches of sod.
• Begin planting asparagus roots in early to mid-spring.
• Lay planting rows in your vegetable garden with black polyethylene or fiber mulch.
• Direct sow peas, beets,  onions, and shallots
• Direct sow lettuce, endive, escarole and spinach
• Sow radish throughout the season, beginning now.
• Move broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower transplants into the garden
• Start tomatoes indoors.
• Start melons, pumpkins, summer squash and winter squash indoors.
• Start kitchen herbs indoors, to be transplanted outside.
• Cut back shrubby herbs
• Continue weeding
• Prune shrubs AFTER they flower (May)
• Fertilize  all plants
• Set out dahlias after last frost
• Finish dividing summer and fall blooming perennials.
• Start cucumbers indoors
• Plant gladiolus corms early in May
• Direct sow bush and pole beans, corn, carrots.
• Direct seed parsley - takes 3 weeks to germinate.
• Transplant tomatoes to the garden.
• Transplant pumpkins, melons, squash, peppers, eggplants, and herbs
• Plant strawberries.
• Start seeds for your fall crops of broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts and cabbage for transplanting  in June & July.