A Note From Rick | Spring Blooms
May 12, 2023
By Rick Bogusch
What isn’t there to do in the garden this time of year? Sowing, planting, weeding, watering, fertilizing have become routine as we head into mid-spring.
In the vegetable garden, you can also add harvesting to the list. We just harvested 30 pounds of spinach for the food pantry from a second cutting and are looking forward to harvesting more crops soon.
With night temperatures still in the 40’s, it’s still too cold to plant beans, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants in the garden, but it is a good time for beets, carrots, and lettuce. Though we always sow a row or two of leaf lettuce, we also like to sow head lettuce like Bibb, Romaine, and Iceberg in cell packs to control spacing easily when planting.
We usually fertilize the vegetable garden when sowing and planting, but we also side dress rows and plants with granular fertilizer, especially just before a rain or a watering. And we often liquid feed plants with fish fertilizer, every 2-3 weeks.
For the past six years, Bridge Gardens has been planting, almost exclusively, trees, shrubs, perennials and grasses native to eastern North America.
We do so to support local wildlife, including birds and pollinators, and to show visitors that native plants are just as beautiful and ornamentally useful as exotics, in addition to being beneficial for the environment. We hope to encourage others to plant natives and to adopt gardening practices that also benefit the environment.
Two native standouts in bloom right now are black chokeberry (Aronia melanocarpa) and highbush blueberry (Vaccinium corybosum). Besides producing fruit, both have attractive blossoms and great fall color. Another fabulous native in bloom now is Fothergilla. Related to witch hazel, this shrub is known for its long-lasting, yellow-orange-red fall color, as well as its honey-scented creamy white blossoms.
Native or not, there’s always something to see at Bridge Gardens. I hope you come visit us soon.
~~ Rick
Rick Bogusch
Garden Director, Bridge Gardens
rbogusch@peconiclandtrust.org