Flowers, Flowers Everywhere!

This month's Stadler Nursery post is about Spring of course!

April is one of my favorite months of the year even though, as the manager of three garden centers, it’s also one of my busiest months of the year. The reasons I love April are many. From the warm days and cool nights to the bursts of color everywhere as the cherries, pears, crabapples, redbuds and dogwoods burst into bloom. Wide swaths of bright pansies and cheery clumps of daffodils just sing out Spring to me.

This April has been especially interesting in the garden as everyone here in the Mid-Atlantic has been anxiously waiting to see how their garden plants fared after back-to-back snowstorms in February dumped record-breaking amounts of heavy wet snow that stuck around for weeks. To make things even more interesting, we had several days of temperatures over 90 degrees in early April, a time when our high for the day is usually in the mid-60s. Talk about extremes!

One result of our super-heated April is that everything seems to be several weeks ahead of schedule in the garden. My big beautiful crabapple was in full bloom the first week of April. I don’t usually see that show until after April 20. The Kwanzan cherries are all in full bloom this week. That is generally a late April into early May event. A number of the late spring perennials are up and flowering all over my garden. While it’s very pretty, I’m keeping my fingers crossed. Our projected last frost date for this area is still a week or more away. A frost now would do quite a bit of damage to all the premature soft tender growth everywhere.

On a larger scale, this area is home to a number of orchards. I’m sure the farmers are joining me in anxiously watching the nighttime temperature forecasts. A freeze now, with all the fruit trees in bloom or even setting fruit, could seriously impact their income for the year.

If a frost, or worse yet a freeze, is forecast, the farmers have a few methods they can employ in an attempt to minimize the damage, from irrigation to smudge pots to large commercial fans that keep the air moving. For the home gardener, the best defense is to cover those tender shoots with sheets and towels. Never use plastic to cover plants. The heat will build up quickly under the plastic as soon as the sun comes up the next morning and do more damage than the frost would have done in the first place.

Fortunately, the ten-day forecast for my area offers night temperatures above freezing, so I’m probably safe, especially since I live in the downtown area of my town which offers a slightly warmer microclimate than out in the surrounding countryside. At least I was able to resist the siren call of those summer-like days last week and didn’t rush out to plant annuals and summer vegetables. There’s plenty of time for that. For now, I’m just going to enjoy my favorite month of April.

Cheryl lives with her husband and their three cats in a 100-year-old house in the beautiful state of Maryland. She has a degree in horticulture from the University of Maryland and has been the manager of Stadler Nurseries in Maryland and Virginia for over 20 years. Become a fan of Stadler Nurseries on Facebook to find out what's going on in the garden world!