Posted on 02/29/2008 4:19:25 PM PST by Gabz
March is blustery days and bright sunshine and rain and the smell of warming soil. It seems a magical thing—soil is always there, so how come the right combination of sun and rain and warmth lets us know that it’s time once again to garden? The technical name for the way the soil smells is geosmin—literally earth smell, but magic is close enough. Geosmin is a magic all gardeners are well aware of and accept without question, no matter what you call it. In reality, the smell is caused by a type of bacteria that grows in the soil, called actinomycetes. When it rains, these bacteria release spores into the air, like a great big aerosol air freshener. We recognize it on some deep, elemental level—like marsh mud, it’s the very essence of life, distilled.
The sunshine and the smell call to us, reminding us that once again it’s time to plant. And not only does it call to us—have you ever seen anyone plow around here and not attract a flock of seagulls? I wonder if they can smell it as well, and know that there are plenty of juicy bugs being disturbed and put on the buffet just for them?
March is a little early for tomatoes and warm season crops, but if you haven’t gotten your cole crops out yet, now is the perfect time. Think how wonderful a mess of May peas and new potatoes is going to taste a couple of months from now! Don’t delay much longer, or the heat will get the cool season stuff! Hard to remember unrelenting heat and high humidity with the weather February brought us, isn’t it?
Things will begin greening up soon, although January’s warm weather had a lot of things fooled. Some of the oaks were leafing out in January, daffodils and hyacinths were sprouting, and even a few gladiolas were sprouting up several inches above the ground.
Plants don’t understand the concept of time as we do. If it gets cold, then hot again, they think they’re supposed to do their thing and grow. They don’t know whether it’s been cold for a couple of nights or a couple of months. Cold—dormant. Warm—grow.
One of the first things to green up is an annual winter weed—Solvia pterosperma. (Winter weed means it grows during the winter months and dies back when it gets hot.) Solvia pterosperma is also known by the names lawn burweed, spurweed, and burr clover, to name a few. You may not know what it’s called but you probably know what it looks like. It’s prostrate, which means it grows flat along the ground rather than growing upright. Burweed looks like a flat dog fennel.
Right now it just looks like a nice green patch in an otherwise brown yard. Take note of those green patches, because in another month or two the whole yard will be green and you’ll lose sight of the burweed. You’ll know it when you step on it barefoot. Think flat sandspurs. These nasty little weeds are a big nuisance. The prickers, shield shaped with sharp stickers on the top edge, are the seeds and they are excellent hitchhikers. If you’ve been to any ball field or boat ramp in the county, or any place else that has grass parking lots, that’s probably where you picked up the bothersome pests. They stick to your tires or your shoes, and anywhere they drop off, they make a new plant. Burweed is an invasive plant and is spreading farther and farther each year.
There are several ways to attempt to get rid of this invasive weed. The best method is to do something before they go to seed—right now! Too low for the lawnmower to affect them, they spread more and more each year as the prickers get carried throughout your yard.
If you just have a few, digging them up helps tremendously, and they‘re easy to spot right now. Of course, if there are any seeds from last year, they’ll come up again. Same thing with the seeds being tracked in from somewhere else.
The other option is to spray. Chemicals that will help are Atrazine, or anything containing Trimec or 2-4-D. Use caution when spraying close to the root zone of ornamentals, as always. These sprays shouldn’t hurt your grass because the grass should still be dormant. Pinecones are down and covering the ground. They’re a pain to pick up, but your mower will thank you. Not only do mower-thrown pinecones pose a serious hazard, they’re death on mower blades. Pinecones make great gifts. What?! If you have somewhere to store them so the squirrels can’t get to them, pick them up and save them. Fix a pretty basket of pinecones to give to friends next fall or for Christmas. Those with fireplaces or woodstoves will appreciate them, or you can save them for yourself. Pinecones are decorative by themselves just in a basket, but they make excellent fire starters. For additional fire starting power, dip them in melted wax. You can even sprinkle them with glitter before the wax hardens to make them showier.
Reminders for this month:
Start spraying your roses as soon as they start leafing out to prevent black spot and other rose diseases.
Bluebirds usually show up about mid-month, so make sure your birdhouses are cleaned out and ready. The old nests should be pulled out and destroyed. Birdhouses can be cleaned with a light mixture of bleach and water.
Remember to spray your fruit trees with fruit tree spray as soon as the buds swell, and keep spraying them according to label directions. If you wait until the fruit is ripening, it’s too late.
If your garden needs lime, go ahead and put it out now. Lime takes a little while to begin working, and it has to be incorporated into the soil, unlike fertilizers which will work their way down. Not sure if you need lime? It’s not too late to send a soil sample to NC. State.
I also have a Hood pear tree and it needs a companion. I would like to get a Florida Home or a Baldwin pear tree either would be great for my area. Problem is no one is selling pear trees locally. Plenty of places over the Internet to get them but I just need one pear tree and every Internet site requires a minimum purchase ranging from $35 - $50 then add in shipping! How disappointing!
Tomorrow is forecast 80 with T'storms.
60 here today, 70 tom. No wonder the plants don’t know what to do.
Your figs will pop pretty soon, just remember to keep them watered, even while they’re dormant.
We can’t find any fruit trees, either. All the suppliers seem to have gone out of business, or like you said, they want an arm and a leg.
I really did not want the pear tree. Now I find out the type they sent needs a companion to produce. Oh, and they don't carry any of the recommended companion pear trees. The web sites that do, sell them for anywhere from $9 to $25 but with a $50 minimum order!
May be someone visiting this thread knows of a local nursery in their area that carries the Florida Home or Baldwin pear trees. I could then contact the nursery and see if they would ship, just one!
Soaked my peas and they went in the ground yesterday.
Cabbage, lettuce, and spinach seeded in this week.
Turned over the tater patch, there was a few big, hummer reds already starting.
Still have to get out and turn over my compost pile, harvest some from the bottom, and put the carrots in, but enough for today already...
My garden is buried in snow, over a foot of it. :((
Please add me to the weekly gardening list.
Right now Northeast Texas is in the same winter storm that's visiting my neck of the woods. Further south, things are already greening up.
Anyway, here's a reference that I suggest: http://aggie-turf.tamu.edu/
Probably the first thing you'd want to do is to identify what species of turfgrass you have. If you don't know, the aggies can do that for you if you send a sample. You'll want to know if it's a cool-season or warm-season species. If it's warm-season you'll want to put down a pre-emergent weed preventer. If it's a cool-season lawn you might want to choose either a pre-emergent or overseeding - you can't do both.
Anyway, the Aggies can tell you all about the particulars for your locale, and I'm pretty sure they have a county extension in each county where you can reference anything that isn't online, and also take samples for experts (usually folks with at least Bachelor's in Science / Horticulture) to look at.
I just read further in the thread and saw your later posts - didn’t mean to jump in where you’re already getting good advice, but the Aggie turf website is worth checking out...
INBN
My garlic is looking great and the very late planting of the Vietnam variety is up about 2 inches. My wife picked up some planting mix but the Black Gold was not in yet. She got 4 bags of local producer and 2 bags of Super Soil from the SF bay area. Super Soil used to be favorite and then they disappeared for a couple of years so we found Black Gold and were very pleased with it.
Sorry to hear you had surgery, glad to hear you’re recovering. Take it easy! You think you can do go right back to doing stuff, and then reality smacks you upside the head!
70 here yest and today, hellacious tstorm about to come through.
Picked some lettuces today—romaine, buttercrunch, red sails, iceburg, and baby spinach—cooked some chicken, added some cheese and bacon bits, tomatoes and cukes, covered it with ranch. Not too shabby! The lettuces were all started in the greenhouse, so I got a jump. We’ve been selling lots. Hope this storm tonite doesn’t do too much damage.
FIL plowed my garden today! YIPPEE! If we don’t get too much rain, I may try to plant some this weekend.
Two years ago I had the unfortunate experience of have an F2 tornado hit the house we were living in. It was about 8pm, very dark out, my wife was at work and I was at home watching the weather on TV. Bad weather all around. I looked out our picture window, which over looked a small pasture. A La-Z-Boy furniture factory was on the other side of the pasture and I watched as a bunch of lights in the distance started to go out and electrical sparks were flying ever where. There was no warning on the radio or TV. The La-Z-Boy plant was lit up pretty good and all of a sudden the lights started to explode and sparks flying everywhere. I rushed to the couch and grabbed the collars of my two Irish Setters and pulled them into an interior bathroom. I just made it into the door of the bathroom with the dogs push inside and was laying on the floor when it hit. A very violent explosion of windows blowing out and noise! And then it was over! Just a few very violent seconds! I told my wife it was like standing right at the wall of a NASCAR race and having the cars rush by at 200 miles an hour ... whoooosh and they are gone!
No lights and glass everywhere. I went outside with a flash light and put the dogs in a pen. Called my wife and told her what happened and she rushed home from work. No major damage to the house except for the windows blown out. Actually they were not blown out but huge boards from the pasture fence and pieces of the factory's steel roofing had hit he side of the house. Pieces of wood fencing and steel roofing were every where. The shingles from the roof were ever where. A gazebo was distroyed. I had a pile of those green steel fence posts that was gone. The power company found one of them stuck in one of their polls about 20 feet up and bent at over 90 degrees.
Sorry for the rant but that is why I can't sleep at night with bad T-storm fronts coming through!
We went to Pierson's Garden Center yesterday and got 6 bags of Black Gold for seed starting and flower pots later. We use about 25 1.5 CF bags a year and then use that in flower beds next year. BLACK GOLD I see what you mean about the price of fertilizer. I'll check at the feed store this week and see what they have.
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