Spring Gardening Checklist 

Last Updated on April 3, 2018 by Hanna Trafford

If you are anything like me – and millions of others – you can’t wait to get out into your garden and start digging, cutting, pruning, planting and doing whatever needs to be done to make it best ever.

Here I am sharing my To Do checklist with you – hope it will help you and motivate you!

Spring Gardening Checklist:

• Start annuals, tomatoes and peppers from seeds indoors
• Start your summer flowering bulbs like dahlias, cannas, etc. indoors by potting them and setting them up under lights until after the last frost date
• In your garden, clean up your flower beds, picking up fallen branches, twigs, dead plants and other winter debris
• Prune deciduous trees and shrubs – but not the  ones that flower of run sap in the spring
• As soon as you can work the ground, you can plant hardy cool-weather plants like onions, cabbage, radishes, sweet peas and leeks.
• You can also spray scale-infested trees and shrubs with dormant oil before their leaves show up.
• Put slow-release fertilizer to flowering shrubs and vines – that includes clematis, roses and rhododendrons
• And start pulling out weeds as soon as they appear in your garden
• If you have hydrangea in your flower beds, cut it back all the way to the ground
• Spread compost on beds and start adding kitchen scraps and yard waste to your compost bin to start a new batch of compost
• Divide mature perennials and replants them into other places
• Install a rain barrel to collect runoffs from eavestroughs and to have water to use watering your plants
• Don’t plant your tomato and pepper plants until soil temperature reaches 17C
• To clean up spring-flowering perennials, cut them back once they finish flowering
• It is a good idea to pinch back seed heads on plants like rhododendron and azaleas – it will leave the plants energy to grow better.
• Fertilize daffodils, crocuses and tulips after they finish flowering – your bulbs will be stronger and will flower beautifully next spring.

Please add your comments, suggestions and tips – your input is as always very much appreciated!