Protect your investment by receiving annual maintenance visits from Aquarian Gardens. Aquarian Gardens offers comprehensive garden care services. We can help you choose a maintenance plan that is right for you!
Spring Clean Up
Spring clean up includes raking leaves, clean up, weeding and cultivating, applying animal repellent, adding new perennials and trimming shrubs.
Garden Maintenance
Gardens should be kept free of weeds. Thorough cultivation (hoeing) to a depth of 3 to 4 inches is recommended in the spring before planting annuals, before mulching, and as needed throughout the garden season. It is important to remove all the roots and stems of the weeds, to prevent them from recurring. Plants that have become overgrown and are spreading into other plants should be divided or weeded away from the other plants. It is important to be careful when weeding and cultivating early in the spring. Some plants such as platycodon and asclepias are slow to emerge and it is easy to damage the plants as you hoe over them.
Mulch
Mulch should be applied annually for the first 3 years to a new or renovated garden. It should be applied at a thickness of 3 to 4 inches to discourage weeds. We recommend using a high quality compost. Finished compost is light and scentless, and looks like black dirt. It discourages weeds, retains moisture, and adds important organic material, nutrients & fertilizer to the garden.
Cocoa hulls work well to suppress weeds and retain moisture, but they do not add nutrients to the soil. Bark mulch or wood chips are not recommended for mulching perennials. As the bark or wood decomposes, it pulls nutrients from the soil. Such mulches can cause plants to rot, and it is difficult to cultivate a garden with these types of mulch applied. Bark mulch and wood chips are a fine choice to mulch around established trees and shrubs. Some companies are beginning to offer composted bark mulch, as an alternative to traditional bark mulches.
Watering
Proper watering cannot be emphasized enough. On average, a garden should receive a good rain or watering at least 2 times each week. Watering needs are affected by sun and shade, soil quality and natural precipitation. It is better to water deeply for 30 to 45 minutes every few days, rather than watering for a few minutes each day. This allows the roots to grow deeply into the soil as they reach for water and helps the plants become more drought resistant.
Soil moisture should be monitored carefully. If a rain provides less than one inch of water in a rain gauge, it is likely that your garden will still need to be watered. It is easy to check if your garden is dry by digging several inches into the soil. Dry soil is lighter in color and will crumble easily. Moist soil will be darker and feel cool and slightly moist to the touch. It is important for the moist portion of the soil, after rain or watering to go deep into the garden. You want to avoid having a wet layer on top, with a dry layer in the center, this indicates that you have not watered deeply enough. Gardens that have become too dry require more water because the soil can become water resistant and shed water rather than absorbing it.
Staking
Staking of tall plants is important to keep them looking great. Bamboo stakes and string are a great way to stake plants. Simply tie the string to the stake, push the stake firmly into the soil and tie the string gently around the plant. It is useful to do "preventative staking," staking tall plants before they fall over. Once it has fallen, a plant can become bent or broken and it can be difficult to stake it in an attractive way. Peony hoops and tomato cages are timeless classics that we highly recommend. Place them over the plant early in the season, before it has grown too large. There are a variety of plastic and metal stakes available that can make it fun and easy to stake your garden.
Trimming & Deadheading
Trimming and deadheading should be done with a sharp hand clipper. Deadheading is the fun job of removing finished blossoms from a plant. It is often a good idea to remove the entire stem of the spent blossom for a neater trimmed look. Deadheading encourages plants to keep blooming. It is especially important with some annuals like zinnias, petunias and nicotiana. Certain perennials such as delphinium, cranesbill geraniums and coreopsis will continue to bloom if deadheaded. It can be nice to leave some finished blooms in your garden. Plants like blackberry lily and pasque flowers have very attractive seed heads.
It is a good idea to remove any dead or diseased leaves from your garden. This will help keep your garden looking great and is the best treatment for problems such as rust, yellows, aphids, thrips or powdery mildew. Simply cut off all the leaves and stems that have a problem and move move them out of your garden. You may not want to put diseased plant material into your compost pile, as you may re-introduce the disease to your garden at a later date.
Fall Clean Up
In the fall, after a hard frost, annual plants should be pulled from the garden. Later in the year, before snow falls most perennials should be trimmed down, removing the dead stalks. It is good to leave 2 to 3 inches of stalk above the ground, especially for plants such as platycodon and lily that are slow to emerge in the spring. You may want to leave some perennials standing throughout the winter. Plants such as sedum and asters can be left up to catch snow and provide interest throughout the winter.
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