Take advantage of warm days
to prepare your garden
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Cleanup and clipping:

ike speeding through a small town, spring in Calgary flashes past too fast. Some years, we seem to go directly from winter into summer.

This spring, take advantage of any warmth to get outdoors and begin the annual rite of “getting ready.” All the work culminates in planting, which can begin in late April for pansies, mid-May for hardened perennials and the last week of May for most plants, including the humble potato or new landscape.

To trap and hold moisture, most gardeners leave perennial stems standing in the fall. Tall grasses that waved in the breeze in late fall and tall foliage that stiffly stood above the snow are

now bent and broken and need to be clipped off before signs of new growth emerge. It is time to clip plants as close to the ground as feasible.

It may be that new growth is already emerging if the plant is on the south side of a building, so be careful to only remove old growth. In some cases, woody branches also need clipping back. In the Annabelle hydrangea, the brown twigs will need to be cut back to the first live bud. If in doubt, leave the stems about 30 centimetres tall.
Every bit of foliage removed can be kept on hand for composting, because these are the “browns” that are needed to balance the “greens” in a compost pile. As kitchen scraps or other greens are added to the compost, chop up the saved browns into two-centimetre lengths and add them to increase air to the pile and feed the fungal elements of the compost.

It is always tempting to remove the bits of leaves and duff that are lying on the ground in an effort to “clean” the garden. In fact, you risk removing ladybugs and other beneficial insects if you do that — especially if they are off foraging on a sunny day when the duff is removed. They

will be homeless come the cooler temperatures of nightfall and will freeze from exposure. Avoid being a clean freak and, instead, pull back some of the loose bits from the crown of plants, but leave them on the ground at least until the end of May.

Weeds

Almost before anything else can grow in spring, the weeds start flourishing. Dig or hand pick the weeds such as dandelions or Manitoba maple seedlings as they appear.

Compost

In spring, the compost pile suddenly melts and slumps into a more or less finished layer beneath the winter pile of thawing orange rinds. Some composting systems allow you to dig out the base layer, but in many cases it’s best to remove the whole compost unit and flip the unfinished compost over manually onto the ground or back into the composter.


When you reach the finished compost, toss it into your wheelbarrow. Perfectionist gardeners like to use a screen to sift the compost as it is forked into a wheelbarrow. Then the long bits and pieces that are not fully decomposed can be added back into the compost

Prepping soil

Frost heave

Occasionally, plants installed last summer or fall heave out of the ground in the spring because the peaty soil around the plant holds more water than existing soil; as the peat freezes, the plant is pushed up and out. This is called frost heaving. Simply go around your garden and look for little plants that have popped out and replant them. They may not survive, but it is better to do this now than to just ignore it.

Homemade or purchased compost can be added in a thin layer to the whole garden. A few centimetres of compost added around the base and 20 centimetres beyond the base of the perennial or shrub is ideal, and boosts plant growth. If the garden has bark mulch, rake that back first, add the compost and then replace the bark.

Just before the lawn is raked to remove dead grass, top up the lawn with finished compost. Added in a thin layer and raked in with the grass, the compost is an excellent alternative to commercial lawn fertilizers.
Starting plants and planting

Every year, I hang on to my old canna roots and plant them up again in mid-April. The roots are so big they need to go into large nursery pots, but are kept indoors until later May.

I also start a few flowers and vegetables that can go outdoors once the weather is settled. Flowers that can be started from seed at this late date include nasturtiums, cosmos, zinnias, lavatera, and summer bulbs such as gladiolas and dahlias. Vegetables that can be started ahead of time include broccoli, cauliflower, corn and peas. I usually start zucchini and cucumbers in mid-May.

Pansies can be planted outdoors in the garden by the third week of April because they can tolerate down to 8 C frost.


Last year, I popped in a splash of yellow with pansies just because I could. It was a way of welcoming spring and shutting out winter, even though they were covered in snow at least a few times after they were planted.