July is busy. The first month where the harvest is reliably colorful and supplies a decent meal beyond greens, here up north.
It’s also the end of that precious timeframe where the garden doesn’t require a great deal of clean-up. Up here, not much has died yet.
But it’s coming.
Common garden chores for the USDA zone 4 and zone 5 garden in May. Add fertilizer. Plant roses and other shrubs. Begin to harden off the plants due to be planted outside in mid May.
Succession planting. What you can and cannot plant. Easy method.
Another month, another list a garden chores to prepare for. Inventories of plants, making sure you the plants you need for your favorite recipes,. Shopping for summer items i.e. sunblock, garden sleeves…
Compost your food scraps directly to your garden via the Dig, Drop and Cover method. Save time and feed the soil zoo!
The goal of the home gardener’s cold stratification process is to mimic the winter conditions the seed in the wild would experience in the habitat that plant is best suited for. In my own example, Gentian is a mountain flower. The seed, in the wild, would cold stratify under snowpack (moist) in a cold environment with freezing temperatures.