3. Three Words: Sanitation, Sanitation, Sanitation

If you did not do a good job of cleaning up all of the leaf litter, dropped fruit and other debris last fall, I strongly urge you to do that! Not only does it make for a cleaner, neater appearance it can be life saving to your future crops. Diseases, fungi and insect larvae can grow over winter and it will rear its ugly head faster than you can blink an eye. This is also the reason to practice rotating your crops; in other words, don’t plant the same thing in the same spot, year after year. If you had any kind of disease or fungus issues last year, do not throw your debris in the compost bin, burn it or toss it in the trash.

4. Make a List and Check it Twice

Hopefully, you kept pretty good records from your previous gardens? Think back to what you did last year, what worked, what didn’t, and what you wished you had planted. The definition of an idiot is to do the same thing over and over again in hopes of a different outcome. If that certain type of tomato did not work in previous attempts, try something different.

Make a list of what did work, and then build on that. Something to keep in mind, and I understand your crystal ball is probably still broken, try to think about your upcoming year. Do you foresee a very busy work year and your garden time may suffer? Then stay away from high maintenance plants. Roses here in the south come to mind. You needing to spray them with a preventive fungicide rather often, if you miss a spray or two and the fungus hits, it is hard to rid your yard of it. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure is actually a pretty good saying.

5. Stock Up on all of the Products you use Regularly

This goes along the same lines as checking your tools. Nothing will break your momentum or steal your gardening time quicker that finding some nasty little insect eating away on your favorite plant and not having any insecticide to apply. Fungicide can fall into this same category. Granted, it may not be a life and death situation, but the sooner you can get a handle on either of these situations, the better.

You can even stock up on fertilizer. How many times have you been out working in the yard and realized it was time to feed something? Then you realize you don’t have any of that particular food. You can feed it with something else, which might be okay if it is a similar product. You can run out immediately and get some, killing your time again. OR, if you are like me, say to yourself, “I will get some next time I am at the store”, then forget all about it the next time you are at the store! Here again, a list is a good thing. Take inventory of what you use, what you have, and then make that list of what to get.

I am sure there are many other things that you need to do before you get down and dirty in the yard this spring. I wanted to give you a list of the “sometimes forgotten until it’s too late” items.

Happy Growing!

-Darren Sheriff