Wahoo!
The temps are rising and so is our desire to get out in our yards and garden beds and get busy! Giddy as children and busy as bees, so to speak. Well, hold up!
It’s mid-March and it’s SO tempting to get in there and start cutting back your perennials and grasses that you left up for wildlife over winter and to have something pretty to look at.
The soil is NOT ready for you. There are mixed reports on pollinator protection in Spring. Here’s the deal, nesting bees like the stems of those plants and are, hopefully, in them right now. You can cut them back, however, you might be disturbing them. If you can't stand to wait, cut them back but don’t crush them, just lay them in a pile and let the process of the pollinators complete the cycle.
Sedum stems
The University of Minnesota Southwest Outreach and Research Center takes weekly frost depth readings. The last reading on March 14th was 39 inches with 2 inches of thaw. That really means soggy soil. Tread lightly, as mentioned before!
NOTE: Extension horticulture educator, Julie Weisenhorn, says it’ll be several weeks before shovels should go into the ground. With melt and likely rainfall, the soil will be soggy. NEVER work in wet soil.
Limit walking on your lawn, let alone raking it! If you are trampling all over, you will compact your soil which translates to less air getting to plant roots. They need oxygen too! Our last Spring frost date in the Twin Cities area has been May 15th, however, climate change is changing that date with some experts saying it’s closer to April 20th. No matter, we still need to “tread lightly”.
Just a reminder... this photo was taken April 4th, 2020...
So WHEN can you cut back those perennials and grasses? Some folks wait till early May... I’m too antsy for that. I try to wait until the garden beds aren’t wet. That would be April sometime.
When all is said and done, you be you...
