Yearning for yardwork?
Stopping to smell the flowers
Arlene Marturano

Arlene Marturano is a master gardener, writer, and educator. As an advocate of gardening as a tool for learning, she helped develop the Carolina Children's Garden at the Sandhill Research and Education Center. She is an education consultant with T.E.A.C.H.

marturano@yahoo.com

By February the sap starts rising in gardeners. While the urge to uncover beds and start planting is strong, restraint is important in cultivating the soil, planting seeds, and fertilizing. There are a multitude of ancillary tasks one should accomplish before the spring planting season starts:

+ Clean out and organize the tool shed.

+ Take roll of tools and store the list on your computer. Consider painting tool handles with bright colors to make them easy to find. Donate unneeded pots and tools to local school garden programs.

+ Clean and sharpen garden tools.

+ Repair, repaint, and replace garden furniture and accessories such as trellises, fencing, arbors, and window boxes.

+ Test and repair hoses and watering system components.

+ Pull winter weeds up by the roots before they set seed.

+ Clean out nesting boxes and wash bird feeders and bird baths. Place yarn, string, dryer lint, and pet hair in shrubs for birds to gather when nest building.

+ Set up the compost bin you promised yourself and offer to make one for a neighbor as well.

+ Make a cold frame, a bottomless glass- covered box located in a sunny well- drained area. The cold frame can be used year- round to start seeds, root cuttings, and harden off seedlings.

+ Plant trees and shrubs so they can establish roots.

+ Remove debris from pathways and beds. Cut away dead branches on trees and shrubs.

+ Layer your favorite shrubs to produce new plants. Loosen the soil around the shrub and bend an agile branch, minus the leaves, to the ground. Scrape an inch or so of bark from the lower side of the branch. Cover the branch with soil. Set a rock, brick or flower pot on the branch until roots form. Berry bushes, viburnums, azaleas, weigelas, willows, spireas, forsythias, and barberries are easy candidates but experiment with others.

+ Shop for garden gloves at local garden centers.

While busy working in the yard, preview spring by coaxing trees and shrubs into bloom. Branches from apple, pear, peach, plum, cherry, dogwood, flowering almond, lilac, and serviceberry placed in warm water will give a succession of indoor bouquets until spring blossoming begins outdoors.

Soon the time will arrive for cultivating, sowing seed outdoors, fertilizing and the myriad of tasks associated with spring.