A message to gardeners: As I garden in USDA Hardiness Zone 6, the Timely Tips for each month are prepared with my gardening tasks in mind. Adjust the timing to fit your area/zone.

[February/March 2010]


1. Happy New once again!!!!    If you failed to make New Years resolutions last month, you still have time to make them now and resolve to keep them.    From personal experience, I know it's easy to procrastinate and put off gardening commitments.

2.Resolve to "Keep good garden records."

3. Resolve to "Read the label."

4. Resolve to "Follow the manufacturer's recommended rates and directions."

5. BResolve to "Plan before your plant."

6. Resolve to "Call the Garden Hotline® on the WOR Radio Network, Sunday, 8-10 AM EST at 1-800-321-8828 for help with your garden questions and problems."

7. Prepare a family inventory for the vegetable garden. Inventory "who will eat what". There is nothing more frustrating than planting, cultivation, and harvesting a crop and find out that no one in the family will eat it.

8. Prepare seed orders for flowers and vegetables from 2010 catalogs or go On-Line to your favorite seed company website during "Armchair Gardening Month." Don't forget to send in your payment along with your name and shipping address. My rule of thumb in selecting varieties for my garden is: Plan on using 80% tried and true varieties and 20% newly introduced varieties. If you’re new to gardening or new to a gardening area, contact your County Cooperative Extension educator for varieties recommended for your area, they may be AAS (All-America Selections). Also, look around for neighbors who are gardening. They can give you names of varieties with which they have had success.

9. With the heating season well underway, increase humidity for houseplants which are suffering from browning tips on their leaves.

10. Continue feeding houseplants which continue to grow during the winter months. I feed at half the recommended rates during winter.

11. Purchase seed starting supplies. You'll need a sterile seed starting mix, sterile trays, and labels. Commercially prepared window sill seed starting kits are available from mail-order seed catalogs and local garden centers.

12. Before starting seeds indoors, read the back of the seed packet for requirements referencing light, moisture and nutrition. This year, I'm using OceanSolution by OceanGrown available at www.oceangrown.com. I used this nutrient solution on geraniums and container grown tomatoes last summer and fall with "outstanding" success.

13. Rinse foliage of gardenias every three to four weeks with clear tap water during winters heating season to suppress spider mite infestations. Apply hot pepper wax spray or other miticide if needed. Read the label.

14. Plan to attend all local Spring Flower Shows. Take along your garden questions for discussion with gardening experts.

15. Rotate houseplants sitting on the windowsill by 180 degrees (turn them around) each time they are watered to provide equal light to all sides of the plants.

16. Dried flower arrangements can be dusted with a hair drier (cool setting) on low blower.

17. In heavy feeding areas, reapply deer controls as needed. For foliar applications, I use two different repellents, one which works by taste alternated with one which works by smell. Read the label. Examples: Bobbex liquid, Bonide Repels-All liquid, or Deer-Off liquid.

18. To protect emerging spring flowering bulbs beds from browsing deer, apply repellents just as the new growth emerges. I treat an area as much as 10 feet wide outside the bulb bed to increase effectiveness. Repels-all Granular or Liquid, Bobbex liquid, Liquid Fence, Milorganite granular.

19. If you're feeding birds in your garden, be sure you are putting out the right feed for the species of birds in your area.

20. Before using any pesticide on houseplants be sure it is cleared for use indoors. Read the label.

21. Keep poinsettia plants out of drafts and in filtered bright light with average room temperatures and maintain the soil as evenly moist.

22. Christmas cactus can continue setting flower buds if they are grown with NO artificial light at night.

23. Remember the #1 Rule of the Garden Hotline®. When using all garden products, read the label and follow the manufacturer's recommended rates and directions.