While the rain has returned, last week was a good reminder of how fast we can dry out. If you still have plans to relocate trees and shrubs in your garden, don’t delay any longer. Move the largest ones first because they are likely to suffer the most stress.

• If you have deciduous perennial material (in other words it hides underground in winter – plants such as hostas) be careful where you walk on the garden or you may find you have just snapped off all the new shoots.
• You are running out of time to sort out your lawns. Oversow bare patches if you haven’t done so already. Don’t delay on getting new lawns sown. The false bed approach to laying a new lawn is to cultivate the ground to its final tilth, let the first crop of weed seeds germinate, then recultivate (to kill the weeds) and sow the grass seed. This technique works well in the vegetable garden too. If you feel you must fertilise your lawn, use a natural product such as Bioboost.
• Camellias can be shaped and pruned as flowering finishes and do not delay any work you want to do with shaping conifers as they will making their spring flush shortly.
• If you have mixed or herbaceous borders which are relatively self maintaining, it still pays to fork over the soil between the plants to stop compaction and to lay mulch. Fertilise with blood and bone.
• It is more of the same as last week in the vegetable garden. This is the most important time of the year to start your early crops and to prepare the beds for the planting of main crops in a month’s time. Keep on top of the weeds, cultivate the soil, add compost as a mulch. Research has shown that compost does not have to be dug in but does the double job of suppressing weeds as well when laid on top. There is now enough heat in the sun to hoe weeds and leave them to dry on top.

While on the topic of hoeing, we have a quote from American humorist Henry Beard this week (this one is for you to quote, Valmai).

Hoeing: a manual method of severing roots from stems of newly planted flowers and vegetables.

What a lot can change in a week. Spring really-o truly-o has arrived and for us, the garden visitor season has started. There is a sense of slight panic as we tackle the tasks which we had hoped to get completed in winter. Do not delay any longer on winter pruning (all deciduous trees except cherries and related family members such as flowering peaches and almonds). And if you plan a hard prune and shape on evergreen trees and shrubs, including rhododendrons and vireyas, do it now. The plants will be ready to put on their spring growth and that vigour will help them recover from hard pruning or bad pruning.

• If you have rhododendrons which are looking a little sad, taking out all the dead wood can improve their appearance quickly. If all or most of the leaves are silver, you had a problem with thrips last season (nasty little leaf suckers). You can not turn the silver leaves green again though the new growth will appear in green, to start with at least. In a small garden, you might as well take the whole plant out and replace it with something which is going to stay healthier and not need spraying. In a larger garden, open up around the plant to allow more air movement and light (thrips do not appear to like drafts) and give the plant a heavy hair cut. You can cut back to bare wood on a strong growing plant, to rejuvenate it. Sacrifice the flowers this season for a better looking, bushy plant next season.
• If you are inspired by vegetables, get hold of the Kings Seed Catalogue (also available on line, we are told) for the most interesting range in the country. But shun the strawberry spinach which should be on every regional council banned list and soon.
• It is a critical month in the vegetable garden. Get the ground ready for the summer crops which will be planted out in four to six weeks time. Dig in green crops, clear weeds, cultivate the soil, incorporate compost and generally get the soil rich and friable if you want good results.
• If you are after early harvests, start tomato seeds, corn, melons, cucumbers, capsicums, courgettes and all the rest. But do it in pots under cover. A cloche placed on the intended site now will warm the soil faster for planting out your tender seedlings. It is much cheaper to grow from seed than to buy small plants.
• Keep planting peas and potatoes from now on to ensure a succession of crops. Early salad vegetables can be grown under cloches to give them the additional warmth and protection they need.
• If you have a glasshouse, you need to remember that a sunny day can overheat your tender seedlings remarkably quickly.

 Henry Mitchell summarised the panic of spring when he wrote:

There is nothing like the first hot days of spring when the gardener stops wondering if it’s too soon to plant the dahlias and starts wondering if it’s too late.

If you have been meaning to move any established trees and shrubs, do it as soon as possible. Take as large a root ball as you can and prune back the top to reduce stress on the plant.

• The optimum time for fertilizing plants is just as they are starting to go into their main growth period. So feed sasanqua camellias now but wait until the others near the end of their flowering (when they will put on their new season’s growth). Feed deciduous trees and shrubs when they are breaking into leaf. Don’t waste money on the expensive plastic coated slow release fertilisers which are designed for use in growing container plants, not for topdressing garden plants. Bioboost, nitrophoska blue, blood and bone or similar are much cheaper and all that is needed to give garden plants a boost. Fertilisers do not condition the soil. That is achieved by adding compost, leaf litter or humus.
• With September looming, it is all go in the vegetable garden with planting for spring and summer. Dwarf beans can be started in containers or, if you have a warm, coastal position, you could even sow the first crop directly in the soil. Get new potatoes in, if you haven’t done so yet, as the fear of frost is over for coastal areas at least.
• Peas can be sown now on a fortnightly basis and should be a compulsory addition to any garden with children. They will probably eat the entire crop but what lucky littlies to learn that peas actually grow in the garden rather than in a plastic bag in the freezer. As the peas germinate, they need a support to twine their way around and climb. You can use criss-crossed branches or bamboo if you don’t want to put in a more solid wire or netting frame. Sparrows in particular will take out the young shoots so having some netting to spread over them while they get established will hold the birds at bay.
• Never underestimate the usefulness of a large patch of parsley, especially at this time of the year when the price of fresh vegetables is skyrocketing. Parsley is fearfully good for you and chopped and scattered in quantity on top of meals otherwise lacking in fresh greens can make you feel virtuous. It is also a useful addition to make-do salads if you are lacking in much that is fresh or green. Parsley is biennial – in other words it goes to seed in its second year so you need to establish it two years running to ensure continued supply and to always let one plant seed. Otherwise it looks after itself.

Apparently (according to the Curious Gardener’s Almanac) baseball legend, Babe Ruth, used to wear a cabbage leaf under his cap to keep his head cool in games. This is a fashion which appears to have been slow to catch on amongst our sporting and farming fraternities.

As we write this, we have had three days without rain or wind and to be out in the sun in the garden reminds us of what a pleasure it can be. Now all we need are a couple of degrees of extra warmth and a fine weekend to make all gardeners feel that everything is well in their world.

• If you have small feature conifers (and the dwarves and smaller growing varieties make splendid year round feature plants), cleaning out the accumulated debris from the centre of the plant is not only quite a satisfying task, it is also good for the plant and can reduce disease or pest problems. We have the country’s conifer experts in New Plymouth at Cedar Lodge so the best of advice is available locally. If you are into clipping conifers, be cautious about cutting back to bare wood as many will not sprout again (totara is an exception). It is often safer to renovate a tired plant by finding its established branch structure and featuring its lovely gnarly shapes rather than trying for bushy sentinels.
• Get onto planting woody trees and shrubs soon so they can get established before summer. Garden centres should have the best range available at this time, except possibly for fruit trees which probably sold out a while ago.
• The weeds are on the march. Ignore them at your peril. The nasty seeding bitter cress has already produced its first generation of seeding parents who will continue to multiply exponentially if you let them.
• With spring approaching, carrots, summer spinach and onions can now be direct sown into the vegetable garden. You can still get a good crop of garlic if you missed the mid winter timing, but give this priority if you are still to sow it. Dig in green crops. They need a few weeks to break down before you plant into the area. Really weedy vegetable gardens can be dug over and the weeds treated as a green crop, providing they are not seeding. Don’t think you will get away with digging in the weed seeds.
• It is your last chance to prune grape vines although they will likely weep now because the sap will be rising.

The Quotable Gardener has a whole section of excerpts about lawns. American garden writer, Michael Pollan perhaps came up with the most succinct:

A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule.