Water Your Garden
Not too much, not too little, avoid wetting the foliage, using a soaker hose is suggested as the most efficient way
to get the job done right.
Caring For Your Perennials
- Weed your garden: Use a hoe if necessary, get the sharp blade to slice them off just under the soil surface, or . . . pull them by hand.
- Edge your garden and keep it tidy: Where do your lawn stop and your garden begin? Create a perimeter with an edging tool or put a permanent one in place.
- Fertilize your garden: Low-nitrogen, high-phosphorus fertilizer encourages more buds and less greenery. A single application in spring is sufficing, but be sure to read the packaging to ensure you are applying the right dose.
- Mulch your garden: Keep weeds to a minimum and maintain moisture.
- Deadhead your garden: Take scissors, pruners, or use a sharp fingernail to remove dried up buds and damaged leaves; this helps prevent the production of seeds and induces the potential for plants to re-bloom.
- Inspect your garden for pests and problems: Leaves with holes or shriveled edges, sticky residue, discoloration, spots, bite marks, deformed buds or damaged stems are all significant signs that you have an unwelcome guest in your garden. Bring some evidence to your local garden center and they can point you in the correct direction to relieve your plants of the disease or pest infestation.
- Clean-up your garden: To protect plants in cold weather conditions layer them with a couple of inches of mulch to keep them insulated through the winter months. You can cut them back fall or spring; there is no right or wrong, rhyme or reason to pick one season over the other.
- Support your garden: Place stakes close to your larger plants early on to avoid upsetting their roots and before allowing the plants to get too large.
- Share your garden: To sustain beautiful perennials it is recommended to split big plants every 3-4 years; in spring or fall, or when they are not in bloom. Transplanting