April 12-18: In the garden, it’s time to...
Your strawberry patch probably looks like it came out on the wrong end of a very rowdy party.
Cherish the cherries. Everything this week is about the pink. The cherry trees, the weeping cherry trees, the magnolias, the Pennsylvania redbuds, and of course all of the cherry blossoms in West Philadelphia and on Kelly Drive. Cherry blossom celebrations are happening all around the city: Must-see is the cherry blossom allée (much of which was donated by Japanese dignitaries ) that runs from the Shofuso House in Fairmount Park to the Mann Center. Blossoms should peak there this weekend, and I’m already watching the weather, because we’re having an outdoor wedding!
Clean up your strawberry bed. Last year’s plants put out lots of runners, and over the summer most of those rooted. What this means is that your strawberry patch probably looks like it came out on the wrong end of a very rowdy party. In the old school, they taught us to run a rototiller down the middle of the row and let the remaining plants become this year’s crop. You don’t have to be quite that drastic, but you should probably thin out half of the plants and give them to your neighbors. Reset any of the remaining plants that have popped up out of the ground during the winter, add some compost. Make sure the roots are underground, but don’t cover the crowns of the plants with soil.
Free the bulbs! Daffodils and tulips are evident everywhere, but more are trying to come up from under all the trashy stuff that’s still in your beds. Gently clean the leaves out from around the bulbs. If you insist on using a leaf blower for this job, please have the courtesy to wait till after 9 in the morning to start it up.
Sally McCabe is associate director of community education at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (phsonline.org) and winner of the AHS Great American Gardener Jane L. Taylor award.