Preparing For Spring - Southern Oregon
Spring is just around the corner and now is the time to start doing your cleanup and getting your garden beds ready for planting. With all the heavy rain we had recently, it's easy to see we are off to a lush start.
The more rain we get moisturizing all your roots, the better the growing starts off when the warmer weather starts to kick in to ignite - as the name of the season suggests - springing. You can see this happening in many plants around the valley with the sun and warmer temperatures we've been having since those rains. All that rain also made this is a great time to be doing your ground work - digging, trenching, removing stumps and plants, turning your compost, working that soil, and planting trees and shrubs!
Fertilizing your beds is also appropriate now - fertilizing in the early spring is ideal. Remember not to add fertilizer directly to plants when planting and/or transplanting them. This can often cause shock. Stick with your rich soil amendments appropriate to the plants you are working with for all your planting and transplanting. It is fine to plant and transplant into beds pre-fertilized, you just want to avoid adding fertilizer directly into the actual hole you are planting into.
This month I'm featuring work from one of my most recent projects completed in Souther Oregon. Here you will find examples of projects you can be tackling in your garden now.
Japanese Maple Garden with Wild Violets
Weeded out everything but violets and bulbs - except the violets around Japanese maple feeder roots.
Pruned Japanese maple.
Amended and fertilized this bed with an acid based soil and fertilizer.
Front Gardens
Weeded and cleaned up the garden beds.
Pruned Photinia.
Dug out volunteer holly and Oregon grape root at the root.
Removed 2 dying arbor vitae evergreens along with the dying Photinia - replaced with Catawbiense Grandiflorum rhododendrons.
Pruned all the roses.
Amended and fertilized the soil of all the garden beds.
Here are pictures of 2 of the finished beds in the front gardens, along with a close up of the freshly pruned Photina shrub and Catawbiense Grandifolium rhododendron in all their beauty to wrap this one up!
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