Welcome to spring, a busy and exciting time to get back into the garden. Depending on where you are located, you may want to hold off for another month or so on your spring planting but make sure you are ready to go once you're pretty sure you won't be hit with any sneaky cold snaps.
Here are some things you could start thinking about this month:
- Finish harvesting and removing all the winter vegetable plants as you need the space for you spring planting.
- Cultivating, aerating the soil with a fork (just wiggle it in the soil, don’t turn the soil over) and adding compost or chopping down winter cover crops on the garden beds.
- Sowing and planting all your summer crops and flowers. You can’t really go wrong at this time of year, so rather than telling you everything you could I’m just going to say you can sow or plant seedlings of most things. Just remember to space out (over time) the planting so you have staggered crops ready to harvest over summer.
-
Keeping a close watch for pests and diseases that may need prompt attention. If you do, it’s usually a sign that something is out of balance in your garden. Super healthy plants have their own defence system. There are lots of organic options and gentler products like Neem oil to help you through, but only use these as a temporary plaster, you’ll still need to figure out what your garden actually needs to thrive.
FOOD FOREST
Depending on where you are in the country, you may have already done or will be starting to think about doing your spring ‘reset’ in the food forest, ready for lots of fast spring growth.
It’s generally a good time to plant into the food forest straight after the reset but if you’re like me and your system is young and now not going to give enough shelter to your higher-value plants that need some shade while they are young, then you may want to hold off planting for another few weeks until your support species are starting to bush out again.
What I’m learning is that these things are always about your particular context and your connection with the land so there is no specific way to do things, just the way that is right for you! You can use other’s experiences as a guide, but your food forest has its own context, you have your own context, and it’s not a one size fits all answer. Learning by doing and responding to its feedback is a great approach in the food forest …and perhaps in life too!