Gardening New Year’s resolutions

With Jan. 1 just around the cor­ner, many of us are still look­ing for that per­fect New Year’s res­o­lu­tion. Most peo­ple seek res­o­lu­tions that will change their life, make them angelic, smarter, pop­u­lar, health­ier, and of course hap­pier. It’s exhaust­ing just to think about it. In con­trast, I offer res­o­lu­tions for the chronic pro­cras­ti­na­tor. That’s right, these res­o­lu­tions, with a few excep­tions, can be delayed for months, at least until the grow­ing sea­son. I present to you my top 10 gar­den­ing resolutions.

1. Next sum­mer I will remove from my gar­den any­thing that doesn’t mea­sure up. If it looks man­gled, stran­gled or oth­er­wise mal­nour­ished I am pulling it out! In the past I have been too much of a nur­turer; water­ing, prun­ing, feed­ing or blast­ing with insec­ti­cide ail­ing plants all for naught and to the detri­ment of a pretty landscape.

2. I will con­serve water. Most experts rec­om­mend sub­stan­tial, infre­quent water­ing for estab­lished plants, typ­i­cally a total of about one inch of water per week (includ­ing rain). One or two appli­ca­tions a week encour­ages deeper root­ing, which pro­motes stronger plants. I will water in the morn­ing which tends to be cooler and with­out strong winds, so the amount of water lost to evap­o­ra­tion is much less than dur­ing the mid­dle of the day. Choos­ing native plants and mulching will also con­serve water.

3. I will make no prun­ing cut with­out a good rea­son includ­ing safety, health of the sub­ject plant or other plants around it. Rea­sons not to prune include excess energy or a new pair of pruners. I will also prac­tice “timely” prun­ing fol­low­ing the advice of experts. Once I pruned my hydrangeas in March and later won­dered why I had no blooms that year. I had inad­ver­tently removed all of the buds.

4. I will make a long range plan for my land­scape and stick to it. In past years my gar­den has been vic­tim­ized by my com­pul­sive plant buy­ing. This includes pur­chas­ing what­ever is on sale then later squeez­ing said sale items into the land­scape regard­less of space lim­i­ta­tions or light require­ments, often at the plant’s peril.

5. I resolve to include at least one tree in my land­scape plan that no one else on my block has planted. The plight of ash trees destroyed by their neme­sis the emer­ald ash borer reminds us that diver­sity is the key to urban for­est dis­ease con­trol. Vari­ety of plant­i­ngs insures that no sin­gle dis­ease or insect can wipe out all the neigh­bor­hood trees.

6. I can’t speak about trees with­out remind­ing myself and oth­ers to promise not to mulch lit­tle vol­ca­noes around the base of their trees. Mulch should be applied two to four inches deep with a one to inch mulch free area around the base of the tree to insure proper water and oxy­gen flow and to pre­vent insects from dam­ag­ing the bark.

7. Prac­tice inte­grated pest man­age­ment. Before reach­ing for the near­est avail­able pes­ti­cide, I will attempt to iden­tify the pest, eval­u­ate the degree of dam­age and weigh the pros and cons of using pes­ti­cides. Nat­ural ene­mies of plant-eating insects may be able to pro­vide nat­ural con­trol or the dam­age may just be cos­metic and not really call for treat­ment at all.

8. I promise to remem­ber what I plant by keep­ing the plant tag or the seed enve­lope in just one con­ve­nient spot. I used to “plant” the tag next to the plant in order to later iden­tify it, but unfor­tu­nately the tags always blew away. The seed envelopes in par­tic­u­lar pro­vide a broad range of help­ful infor­ma­tion about sun require­ments, irri­ga­tion, fer­til­iza­tion and time to maturity.

9. I will make a con­scious effort to pro­vide food and water for birds and wildlife and con­tinue to feed them once they have come to depend on me. This year I left out a Hal­loween pump­kin until Decem­ber. Even­tu­ally the ani­mals chewed a hole in it in order to har­vest the seeds and fruit. It was fun to watch.

10. This year I will start a com­post pile. By mix­ing it in the soil I will enrich my gar­den and improve plant growth.

So, there you have it — my top 10 gar­den­ing res­o­lu­tions most of which I can post­pone for months. Pro­cras­ti­na­tion is not for every­one but I guar­an­tee it’s a lot eas­ier than los­ing 10 pounds.

Michelle Pear­son is an OSU Exten­sion Mas­ter Gar­dener volunteer.

Posted by Master Gardener on Dec 29 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.