2018

Do not buy compost from Ohio Mulch to make your mix (40/40/20 - Compost/Peat Moss/Grit). Or, if you do, don’t buy leaf mulch or anything they make. It’s not compost; it’s mulch and has very little nutrition it it. Buy animal composted manure for the compost proportional - OR get Scotts Premium Topsoil.

Begin weekly fertilizing the FIRST week of June for ALL potted plants. Don’t forget trees and shrubs in pots. All nutrition has been washed away from the compost in the pots if you have free draining pots (and you do). They need food to thrive. I learned this too late in 2018 and just stared fertilizing in July - and the plants were spindly and unhealthy. They bounced back immediately now that I began a fertilizing regimen - but they could have been SO much more by that point if I had begun fertilizing earlier.
Make sure you use SLOW RELEASE fertilizer or diluted liquid fertilizer. Straight release fertilizer will have the same effect or worse than no fertilizer at all - death of the plant. VERY IMPORTANT.

Be sure all of your pots are free draining. Remove the bottom “pan” if it can be removed. These pans should only be used for indoor plants to keep pots from making a mess. Outdoors they soak plants and leave them way too wet.

Mulch early to keep weeds from germinating with the added bonus of not having to mulch around plants that have yet to come up. This means like mulching in early MARCH. Or mulch in late October. Problem is - mulch supplies.
Spot Spray early where you can’t mulch
Hoe often

Don’t wait until the spring to tidy up. Tidy up in the fall… do yourself a favor. In the late winter and early spring, you can then spray for weeds while the other plants haven’t come up and avoid overspray of the weed killer.
In the spring, again before herbaceous perennials come up, add general fertilizers and lime.

Spring Brook Garden