This month has seen both extremes- windy, cold, and frosty but also balmy and some 70 degree days! Plenty of rain too. Last month, it seemed to rain almost every Sunday and Thursday (the days of my ALTA tennis matches and split traffic shifts. Go figure!).

No matter the weather, a gardener always begins to catch Spring fever about this time. Some plants began budding out as early as the second week of February, and that was a breath of fresh air for anybody who had concerns after that Christmas freeze. By now, cherry trees are flowering, yellow daffodils have shown their bright faces, saucer or ‘tulip’ magnolias are displaying pastel flowers before they even leaf out, and yellow forsythia hedges wave ‘hello’ in the breeze.

The timing is right to prune woody shrubs that were bare all winter. This is easily done with sharp pruners and loppers in a matter of minutes. Things to tackle are lantana, butterfly bush, Knock Out roses, and most ornamental grasses, including liriope or ‘monkey grass’. If maintaining a large area of monkey grass, raise the blade height on a mower and slowly mow over it.

Landscapes can quickly and easily be spruced up by adding fresh mulch or pine straw. Be cautious though of some scammers overinflating the number of bails of pine straw it took to cover an area. It is common practice to ask them to count the strings that came off the bails allegedly used.

Prevention is the best medicine when it comes to a healthy, lush lawn, whether it’s preventing pests, diseases or weeds. Homeowners should always prioritize an application of a preemergence herbicide at least twice per year. This granular application must be timed right so as to kill unwanted weed seeds right as they begin to germinate. Proper timing to prevent summer weeds is generally from mid-February to mid-March in our area. And to get ahead of annoying winter weeds like poa annua, an application of preemergence in late August to mid-September is just right.

So if even more rain is expected, no problem! Bring gardening efforts indoors and focus on houseplants. Just today, I breezed through the house and did three simple things for my houseplants in just 15 minutes.

1. Carefully wipe down (dust) the leaves of larger houseplants with a slightly damp rag. This allows those leaves to catch every bit of sunlight they can.

2. Water plants only if the top 1-2″ of soil is dry sticking your finger in the pot. Remember to check those plastic trays beneath house plants. Don’t let standing water remain there.

3. Rotate each pot. It’s easy to tell when this hasn’t been done because they develop a slight lean towards the sun. Usually just a half-turn of the pot will do.

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