03/24/2024
If you know you know
It's started: the emails and comments asking when it's OK to clean up your gardens. Let's unpack this one issue at a time:
1: Let's stop with the 'clean up' talk. Don't think of it as 'cleaning', your garden is not dirty. It's not messy. It's natural. Start saying to your neighbors 'my garden isn't messy, it's natural, and the creatures in it are still sleeping, didn't you see the SNOW this morning?! Be like the cool kids and leave your leaves longer.'
2: Let's stop with the full removal of all things that have fallen off your trees, with respect of course to the fact that everyone has a different property and neighborhood and tolerance for leaves. Here is what I do: First week of April in the beds along the road only to appease my neighbors, I snip my old plant stalks and leave them in the garden beds. Mid April: I SLOWLY start removing leaves along my road beds. Late April: I move to the beds along the front of my house and by late May I have at least thinned the thick piles in my backyard garden beds to let the plants poke through. I don't touch any leaves in my natural areas or along the river bank.
3: Use fewer garden tools and ditch gas lawn tools of all kinds. I hand remove my leaves, I know it's crazy and slow but I came close to skewering a toad once with a metal rake and it hit me hard. I LOVE TOADS. It also gives me a chance to get down close to the dirt and see what's actually going on and coming up. If I use a power tool it's only ever a plug-in lawn mower every three weeks and the occasional electric weed-wacker because I do like neat edges, it's my pet-peeve.
4: Stop with the 8 inches of mulch! I know mulch makes things look neat, but if you do spread mulch do it yourself or make sure your landscaper isn't making money off you by burying your plants in a foot of the stuff. You only need 2" max, more than that smothers things.
Now go have a nice cup of tea and a cookie and put off garden puttering for another few weeks.
