Last week I sent you outside to start your spring pruning ... and then it snowed. But we survived that, so today I’ll give you a couple of indoor garden tasks to do, and maybe that will give us more sun outdoors.
If you are interested in starting your own pepper and tomato plants for your garden, now is the time to sow those seeds. We are probably six to eight weeks from the last frost (yea!!) so that will give them time to grow to the best size for transplanting out into the garden. Peppers and tomatoes demand warm soil so planting them into cool or cold soil will actually delay their development.
This is also a great time to repot house plants that have grown out of proportion with their container. Move to a pot size that is one or two inches greater diameter than the pot they are currently growing in.
If we are talking geraniums that you have wintered over indoors, you want to cut the top growth back to no more than 10 inches and then also root prune the plant. That means removing the plant from the pot and cutting half of the soil and root mass away all around the soil ball. Then repot it into the same container, filling in with fresh potting soil. Pruning the top and root mass at the same time will result in an amazing renewal of energy for the plant, and you will have a new plant that will acclimate to moving outdoors without being ripped to shreds by the weather. This same procedure is a great way to treat a hibiscus that needs a little discipline.
I’ve been asked if now is the time to put down crab grass preventer on a lawn and the answer is no, this is too early. Crab grass is a warm season weed so the soil temperature has to be warm for the seed to germinate. To stop the seed germination, it has to be on the surface of the soil so applying it too early gives rain the opportunity to leech it below the surface where it cannot be effective.