Echter's
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Green Thumb Tips
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Echter’s Plant Doctors are available
during store hours seven days a week to answer
your gardening questions. For
accurate diagnosis, it helps to bring in a sample.
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Flower Gardens
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Wait until danger of
frost has passed before planting tender plants. Frost
blankets can help protect your plants from unexpected late freezes.
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- Pinch
back your annuals at planting to promote stronger, bushier plants and more
flower production.
More on Planting and Caring
for Annuals and Vegetables
- Annuals, vegetable plants and roses,
selected from inside our
greenhouses should be “hardened off” before planting outdoors. This is
done by exposing the plants to the hot sun and drying winds gradually until
the plants are fully acclimated.
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- Use weed preventer to keep weeds from sprouting
in your flower and vegetable gardens after you have
set out your plants.
Don't use weed preventer where you are sowing seed until after it is up and
growing.
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Container Gardens
- Plant your hanging baskets and
container gardens now to give them a good head start. By June they
should be well established. Keep an eye on the weather and bring
your baskets and containers inside if the weather gets cold.
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- If
your outdoor hanging baskets and planters have dried out too quickly in the
past, mix granules
of Soil Moist (a polymer) into the media of your container gardens and hanging baskets
before you plant. This
will help retain water for the plants to use as needed.
We've added polymers to Echter’s
Container Mix so you can reduce the frequency of watering.
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Perennials & Roses
- Prune back hybrid tea roses, floribundas and other everblooming roses to 10"
in early May. Also, prune out any dead, diseased or weak
canes.
- Do not do a heavy pruning on climbing roses. Prune only those
canes which are
broken or dead.
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Deadhead, (cut off the old flowers) on
daffodils, tulips, hyacinths and other spring-blooming bulbs, but
don't remove foliage
until after it turns yellow. The foliage is making nutrients for
the bulbs for next year's show of color.
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Weeds
take nutrients from the soil and away from your desirable plants. The
smaller the weed, the easier
it is to remove. Pulling them early will
keep them from producing and spreading seeds.
Put up plant supports now for perennials that need to be
staked, like delphiniums, peonies, yarrow, etc. Before you know it
these plants will be too tall to do it easily.
- Speed up the warming of the soil in your perennial and bulb beds by
removing the mulch from around the plants.
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Vegetable Gardens
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Make your list of the tomato
varieties and pepper varieties you want to grow in your garden from these links. It's easier if you know what you want before you go shopping.
Echter's Tomato Varieties
Echter's Pepper Varieties
- Plan
your vegetable garden so that specific plants, like tomatoes, peppers,
squash, cucumbers, etc. are planted in a different spot than they were
planted last year. Rotation of your crops is very important to prevent any
diseases prone to that particular vegetable.
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Check
the "When is it
safe..." link mentioned above to our Frost Hardiness Chart which will enable you to
judge when to plant your vegetable starts.
- For anything that you plant outside early this month, make sure that
you have a frost blanket handy for those sudden and unexpected cold
snaps.
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Lawn Care
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Set your lawn
mower blade to 2 ˝ to 3" to encourage deeper drought-resistant roots.
The longer grass
will keep the ground cooler and require less water.
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- Mow your lawn during the day or early evening when the grass is dry. Never
mow when there is moisture
- on the blades. This encourages the spread of
disease and causes the clipping to clump.
- Now is a great time to reseed the bare spots in your lawn. Rake the
areas deeply and thoroughly, then scatter the grass seed and water it in, so that the
seed can settle into the loose soil. Keep the seed moist until it has
germinated. Fertilize with New Lawn Starter. Do not use a
fertilizer with weed preventer in the areas where you have seeded or
it will prevent the grass seed from germinating.
Echter's Grass Seed Blends
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- If you
had disease problems in your lawn last year, apply Ferti-lome F-Stop as a preventive measure.
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Trees & Shrubs
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Did you have worms in
your apples last year? Help prevent these nuisances by spraying your apple
trees with Bonide Fruit Tree Spray. Spray
your fruit trees as soon as the flowers fade to control insects early.
Another
preventive measure is to rake up weekly all the apples which fall to the ground.
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Pines put out a thick shoot, (called a
candle) from the end of the branch each spring. To
control the height of mugo pines and have denser plants, use your fingers
to break (do not cut) the candles in half before they turn green and the
needles begin to separate. Do not remove the whole candle.
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- Fertilize your trees and shrubs early in May. There are several ways
to fertilize:
- 1) Use a Ross Root Feeder with the appropriate
fertilizer pellet to get the solution right down to the roots. 2) Use
a topical granular around the plants and water in.
- 3) Use slow-release fertilizer and work it into the soil around each plant. This feeds them for several months.
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Indoor Plants
Turn your houseplants a quarter turn
periodically to keep the growth from leaning
toward the window and the light.
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Fertilize your indoor plants twice a month with Jack's Classic Houseplant Special. A good fertilizing
program will help your houseplants get their good spurt of new growth
this spring.
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Wildlife
- When trying to lure butterflies to your garden, place the
butterfly-attracting plants in a large grouping.
A saucer full of wet sand
will provide water for butterflies. Ask for a list of plants which will
attract butterflies to your yard at our Plant Doctor desk.
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