A Few March Gardening Chores Accomplished

This past weekend the weather was perfect for what else? Gardening! I spent most of my time outdoors getting the garden ready for the growing season. There’s always a lot to do in the spring to prepare the garden for a great year. The most frustrating thing about this weekend was my riding mower battery. When I went to start the mower it was dead – way dead. Since the soil is still wet I couldn’t bring the car to the back and had to push it all the way to the car – there’s some exercise for you! I managed to get it jump-started and was able to get the yard mowed.

Forsythia blooming in the front corner garden. Flowering almond on right.

Colors are coming out just about everywhere now. Spring is in full swing right now here in Tennessee! One of the other garden chores I accomplished was the planting of a white dogwood. Its destiny will be to replace the Bradford pear tree behind it in the picture one day. I toyed with the idea of cutting down the Bradford pear this year but decided to let nature take care of it for now. It provides us with privacy on the front porch and it will be a while before our dogwood can do the same. I’ll tell you though, they are stinking up a storm right now!

The front garden is coming along nicely. I can’t wait to show you the creeping phlox when it blooms but today I’ll give you a picture of a self-sown Salvia lyrata also known as Lyre leaf sage. It’s found a home between two border rocks there in the front garden.

I gave the birdbath garden some much needed attention too. I pruned the butterfly bush back to about 18-24 inches. It would grow to gigantic proportions if I didn’t prune it each year! I also weeded much of the henbit and chickweed from the garden. The tricky part was removing it without accidentally pulling the plants growing around it out. It was weaving in between salvia, mums, and achillea. I also moved some of the salvia to other places and opened up the space for the irises to grow. Termites finally found and took out the wooden stand for my copper birdbath. I’ll have to find a new solution for the birdbath and to find a way to prevent the termites from finding our house!

The ‘Shasta’ viburnum is beginning to put on some leaves. It won’t be too long before it’s beautiful white blooms are decorating our garden.

I finally got around to cutting back the miscanthus. Some people recommend burning them to the ground but I think if I attempted that I might burn the neighborhood to the ground! I’ll settle for cutting them back – it’s just safer that way!

I dragged the miscanthus leaves to the back for a special project…

Mulch! I mowed the miscanthus repeatedly with my bagger mower and ground up the leaves and stalks into hay. If you do this remove the seed heads first to prevent any potential miscanthus from growing up in places you don’t want it. I put the miscanthus mulch around a couple hydrangeas in a garden bed next to the garden shed.

I transplanted several plants and even cleaned up the vegetable garden. I’ll share the raised bed vegetable garden with you in another post this week! How was your weekend?