Early spring chores

Time to clean your chickadee house!

One of my readers, Angela, suggested that I try to give month by month tips on what can be done in the garden, or what should be done at various times of the year. So today I’m going to dedicate some time to this question with late February/early March in mind.

Customers in our retail store here in Ladner have been chomping at the bit to get their gardens started. One sunny day, and there’s a stampede of enthusiastic gardeners getting ready-set-go. So my first garden tip for early spring is this:

1. Be patient. I am frequently asked at this time of year, “What seeds can I plant now?” And the answer is, “Very few.” Broad beans can go out now, but you can plant them pretty much any time on the south coast. In truth, it’s still February. The days are still short, and light from the sun is still hitting us from low in the sky. The soil is cold and wet, and it looks like we’ll be getting a frost tonight, anyway. Remember the (south coastal) gardener’s mantra: The last average frost is March 28th, and that’s over a month from now.
It’s true that you can start some plants indoors right now. I have my sweet onions Ailsa Craig and Kelsae started in flats in my sun room. But other plants like peppers and tomatoes (and these absolutely want an early indoor start) need to wait a bit longer. I normally plant my tomatoes and peppers in the second week of March. One year I planted them January first, and I ended up with ridiculously large plants that I had to pot on over and over… There’s no need for this. Wait until March and keep the plants compact and healthy, not scraggly and stressed.

2. Plan, plan, plan! You’ve received your seed catalogues, and I happen to know that a great many of you have received your seeds already, too. Now, what are you going to do with all those seeds? I find that making drawings of the garden plot is quite useful, and also quite exciting. Veggie gardeners need to plan in both space and time, and prepare for both considerations. You won’t be sowing squash seeds outdoors until late May — maybe a bit later if we have another cold spring (Mark knocks on wood). So what can you plant where your squash will eventually grow that will mature in that time?
Look at the “days to maturity” on your seed packets and in the catalogue, and take seriously the advice about spacing in the row. The planting chart on page 5 of the catalogue shows that you can direct sow arugula, corn salad, kale, pac choi, mustards, peas, and radishes all around the beginning of March. These types of seeds don’t need a lot of warmth to germinate, and they may even benefit from a light frost. According to the catalogue, arugula takes 30-40 days to mature into a full sized plant, so if you plant it in the first week of March and allow several days for germination, you can be fairly confident that you can harvest mature leaves by mid- to late April. You can probably do a second and third planting as well, at 2 or 3 week intervals, so that you’re harvesting right up until it’s time to plant squash seeds (or transplant the squashes you have started indoors).
Corn salad, however, is a slow but steady grower. It takes 50 days to mature. You can get impatient with arugula and harvest its tender baby leaves, but corn salad really wants to mature to achieve the best quality of nice, succulent leaves. It also takes a bit longer to germinate. So if you plant in early March, you’re looking at harvesting at the end of April… You can probably get away with it before your squashes go in.
Peas, of course, are a different kettle of fish. They take a good 65-70 days to mature, and then they produce over a several week period. Plant them in early March and you probably won’t begin to harvest before the end of May, and that’s only if we have a warm spring. In cool weather everything in the garden goes at a slower pace. The last two years have shown us just how slow things can go. Plan for it.
Your squash plant, when it emerges, could take as long as 120 days to develop fully, so that will take you right into September or October. And any vegetable that grows for that length of time is going to get BIG. I have grown pumpkin plants that have been 30 feet across. So again, plan for it.

3. Amend your soil. As it happens, today is particularly cold and rainy outside, and would make for a positively miserable afternoon in the garden. However, if we score a couple of sunny days, or even just a stretch without rain, the soil may become workable. I can’t recall the source, but one garden book I read had the clever advice, if you can walk across the bed without sinking or having clods of mud cling to your boots, it’s time to start working the soil. One of my favourite cover crops is buckwheat, and you can begin planting it in March. Buckwheat grows like stink, and once you turn it under (or cut it down for the compost), it breaks down in only a few days. If you planted some in early March and allowed for the germination period of a week or so, then waited 3 weeks for maturity, you could be tilling under by mid-April. It will bloom by then as well, which provides early food for foraging bees. You want to give your cover crops some time to break down in the soil before you start planting. This will take the best advantage of the organic matter they provide, and it will give your garden soil a healthy leg up at the beginning of the season. Combining some clover with your buckwheat in early spring will give you a boost of nitrogen as well as the always desirable organic matter.
If you haven’t done so already, you may want to add dolomite lime to part of, or all of, your garden. Soil tends acidify, particularly in wet weather. Lime will keep your pH more toward the neutral level. It will also add magnesium and calcium to the soil, which benefits leafy green vegetables from lettuce to kale. Don’t lime where you are planning to put potatoes or other plants that like acidic soil. Allow a few weeks after applying lime before you begin to plant so that the soil chemistry can settle out.
Glacial Rock Dust can be applied with abandon. It is a wonderful amendment that cannot be over-applied. It will add a broad range of mineral nutrients to the soil and actually improve the structure of the soil, and it feeds microbial life in your beds as well. Plus, it is really worth applying on a slightly rainy day, as it is a very fine powder that will blow up your nose in the slightest breeze. You can just apply it to the surface of the soil — it will wash down. Avoid applying lime and rock dust in the same areas, as they both raise pH levels.

4. Clean your chickadee house! Believe it or not, this is a really important spring (maybe you did it last fall) chore.  Normally, chickadees excavate their homes in dead wood in a new spot each year. If you provide a clean chickadee house in your garden in the spring, your chances are better that a family will take up residence. All birdhouses and nesting boxes should be cleaned every winter, and now is a good time to get this done, before the birds begin nesting. You need to remove all nesting materials because these can be so lousy with parasites that baby birds may not survive their critical first few days of life. Chickadees, which are fussy about cleanliness in their new homes, positively require a clean house or they will not move in.
If you’re contemplating putting a new chickadee house up in your garden — a perfectly reasonable contemplation, in my opinion — try to mount it near shrubs or bushes, and a minimum of 1.8m (6′) above ground. Chickadees prefer to enter their boxes from the safety of nearby foliage. Choose a box with a specific chickadee-sized entrance hole of 31mm diameter, and one without a perch at the entrance. Entry perches make great places for predatory birds to land, so please avoid them.

5. Keep your eyes peeled for spring! Watch for signs of flowering plants in your area. Cherries can flower really early, but when you start to see dandelion flowers, and when your Forsythia starts to open, these are the true signs of the arrival of spring. You’ll begin to spot bumblebees emerging and the odd honeybee foraging. Prepare to put your mason bees out in mid- to late March, once daytime highs have reached around 13°C.

That’s my two cents for the projects that need to get done early. If you are fortunate enough to have a greenhouse, now is the time to clean it up. Evict the spiders from the corners and give the glass a good rinse. Otherwise, let’s all look forward to March and April, when things really get jumping in the garden, and may our spring this year be a kind one!