It just takes a few warm days for some gardeners to decide it’s time to plant the garden. Depending on what you plant, you may suffer for your haste.     Some seeds will germinate in cool soils, but others will only germinate after the soil warms to 70 degrees. When those seeds are planted in cool soils, the seeds will often rot before they get the warmth they crave. Read seed packets for suggested germinating temperatures.

The demand for organically grown food continues to increase. Because chemical fertilizers cannot be used in its production, growers must depend on natural sources for nutrients, such as animal manures, compost and green manure crops. The demand for compost is so great that it exceeds the supply.     The problem may soon be solved by recent developments in processing biosolids.

Mother Nature mulches in the fall by dropping leaves from her trees and by laying the blades of grasses or the leaves of herbaceous perennials over the soil. She covers the ground only with the waste she produces.

The Jerusalem artichoke is a sunflower cousin that gives both flowers and food. In late August and into September, bright yellow flowers cover its tall stems. Below ground, it is growing tuber-like structures on its roots that resemble pachymorphs of the bearded iris. The tubers are edible.

   ~ April ~      Grow a No-Till Garden     Start your garden as soon as you can work the soil, certainly in April if not already in March.     Do not spade. Save your back and your soil by planting no-till.

I find crape myrtle 10 times more attractive than white birch trees, which we in New Hampshire consider a weed but Marylanders insist on trying to grow against the odds. It is a waste of time and money to plant white birch in southern Maryland because the summers are too hot and the winters do not provide sufficient cold to satisfy the tree’s dormancy needs. We have the ideal climate to grow crape myrtle, a tree (or shrub) that adds so much to any landscape.

Winter weeds have loved mild winter we’ve been having. Annual bluegrass, cardamine, chickweed, henbit and mares-tale, to name a few, are twice the size they were this time last year. Unless you eradicate them now, they are likely to cover the ground by the time you’re ready for planting. They may already be flowering and producing an abundance of seeds.

Wood ash belongs in the garden or on the lawn, not in the trash can or in the compost bin. Wood ash is basic in nature and an excellent source of calcium, potassium and trace elements. This means ash can be used as a substitute for limestone. A five-gallon pail of wood ash will treat approximately 100 square feet of a garden or lawn with a pH of around 6.0.

If you have overgrown plants that are smothering the house or taking over the landscape, now is the time to strike. Hollies, yews, viburnums, forsythia, azaleas, rhododendrons and many more take well to hard pruning. Butterfly bush should be pruned very hard, to within inches of the ground, every year.     The only plants you can’t prune severely are conifers such as junipers, cedar, pine, spruce and fir. These species do not form adventitious buds, nor do they have latent buds capable of sprouting after all other buds have been removed.

Step 1 to a productive garden is getting the location right. Plants perform best in full sun and well-drained soil. You can improve other aspects of a garden, but there is no substitute for full sun and a soil that drains properly.     Next, prepare a soil test. Your soil may do fine for grass and weeds, but that doesn’t mean it’s good for gardening. The pH, nutrient concentration and organic matter in soils are important and can be improved.