March garden chores

Eager to get out in the garden? Now is a great time to get your garden ready for the season ahead.

First, finish cleaning up your vegetable garden and perennial beds. This includes removing any dead vegetation and debris. Insects and disease can winter over and you'll help reduce potential problems later on by doing a good clean up now.

Prune fruit and shade trees while they're still dormant. This is a great time to prune because you can see the tree's structure clearly. You're looking for any broken, damaged or diseased branches.

Prune these out using a sharp pair of pruning shears or loppers.

Next, prune out any branches that are sticking straight up or crossing other branches.

Finally, remove any branches that are coming up around the trunk. 

Prune summer flowering shrubs such as buddleia and caryopteris now. Wait to prune spring blooming shrubs such as lilacs, forsythia, and spiraea until after they bloom. Hold off pruning your roses. This is done later in the spring season.

Test your soil. You can do this yourself with a test kit or stop in and pick up a Soil test kit from CSU.

Freshen up your garden beds by adding organic material such as compost and peat moss. Put 2" of amendments on your beds and work it in 4" to 6". Apply dormant oil. Dormant oil is very effective to control insects that may be wintering over in your trees and shrubs.

Have the lawn aerated and apply Soil Activator.

Soil activator helps improve the soil and helps your grass take up nutrients more effectively.

Next, add Fertilome All Seasons to your lawn. This will feed your lawn and help prevent crabgrass and other weed seeds from germinating. Plant some cool season crops. Cabbage, onions, lettuce, peas, radishes and many other vegetable crops can be planted now, either from seed or starter plants. 

Keep your eye on the weather. If it stays dry, get the hose out and water your trees, shrubs, perennials and lawns. March is a great time to be active in your garden. All the work you do now will lead to a better gardening season this year.

4 Steps to a great lawn

 

 

The Flower Bin Lawn Care program

In order for your lawn to look its best spring, summer and fall, it needs nutrients. The Flower Bin Lawn Care program is built on the idea that regular fertilization, along with good mowing and watering practices is the key to maintaining a strong, healthy lawn. A healthy lawn is more likely to have fewer weed and disease problems.

That’s why we introduced The Flower Bin Lawn Care program. The Fertilome® brand of lawn and garden products is the mainstay of our program and includes four steps designed to keep your lawn healthy throughout the growing season. When you purchase all four bags of The Flower Bin Lawn Care program at once, you will save 20% of the cost of the program and you will continue to save 20% on every Fertilome® product you purchase throughout the year, including a wide selection of garden fertilizers, insect and weed controls. Additional benefits of the program include the satisfaction of knowing you are applying the right product for your lawn at the right time of the season, when it will benefit your lawn the most.

The program begins with Step 1, Fertilome’s® For All Seasons II fertilizer and weed preventer. One of the most effective ways to control weeds in your lawn is to prevent them from showing up in the first place and this product works to keep weed seed from germinating.

This includes crabgrass. Step 1 is applied between mid-March and mid-April.

Weed-Out Plus Lawn Fertilizer is step 2. This product works to control weeds you can see. It’s called a post-emergent.

This is the product to apply for dandelions, mallow and other weeds you can see in your lawn. Weed-Out Plus also feeds your lawn and is applied around the first of June. 

Step 3 is Lawn Food Plus Iron and this is applied in early August, right when your lawn needs nitrogen and iron.

Step 4 is Winterizer and this step is applied around Halloween, when your grass is storing up energy for the winter weather ahead.  This gives your lawn a head start in spring. Stop in and learn how The Flower Bin Lawn Care program will help your lawn become thicker, healthier and more weed and disease resistant.