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March
Newsletter
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March
Newsletter
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March Gardening
Ah spring, wildflowers, spring training, plant sales and garden tours. Stop and smell the roses, take your love ones out for a hike at the superstitions or down to picacho peak. Closer to home check out the new butterfly exhibit at the desert Botanical gardens.
Herbs and Vegetables: Frost is over and its basil time. Beside ordinary basil try spicy globe, Thai or lemon basil. We have seeds for different kinds of basil plus transplants of regular and spicy globe Basil. Basil loves the heat; other heat lovers are tarragon, (just waking up), lemon grass and mint. Look for them at the end of the month. Veggies get those tomatoes and peppers in now. For consistent production you can’t beat early girl. Other good producers are yellow pear, sweet 100 and better boy, lemon boy and roma. Keep planting watermelon, squash, corn, beans, peas, okra, eggplant and cucumbers.
Trees: March is citrus pruning and planting month. Our citrus order has arrived. Look for Mexican limes, blood oranges, kumquats, plus all of the normal stuff. March is a great month to plant all trees. Fertilized all of your regular (non-citrus) trees in March.
Roses: Your roses should be starting to bud now. Aphids gravitate to rose buds, hose them off and soon ladybugs will arrive to eat the aphids. Continue to feed your roses. Spring has a tendency to bring powdery mildew (white powdery stuff on the top of the leaves) and rust (yellow and brown spots on the top of the leaves with spots/blotches of red, orange on the back. For mildew mix two tablespoons of baking soda with 1-teaspoon dawn dish detergent in a gallon of water or while the weather is cool you can use a sulfur spray. For rust pick off affected leaves and destroy the leaves. You may use the sulfur spray also.
Flowers: everything is popping. Lots of fun spring annuals are available at our store. By the end of the month some of the summer stuff should be ready. We have all ready received our first flats of pentas, salvia and coreopsis. Cosmos arrives on Friday. March is a great time to seed in cosmos, zinnias, marigolds and sunflowers. Seeded plants are stronger and take our heat much better.
CLASSES
Join us for our popular herb salve class with Anita Cramm from fly in the ointment. This is a great hands on class with lots of info on healing herbs and making herb teas, besides her amazing salve. The class is on Sunday, April 14 from 3:30-5:30 Cost is $25.00 per person, call the store at 602 253-4744 to book your spot.
April .21 join us and Mr. Gardener to learn everything about growing bamboo in the Salt River valley. He will have lots of unusual varieties to demo and sell.
PLANT SALES
The Desert Botanical gardens present their famous plant sale March 16-17 from 9-5. Lots of unusual plants and free advice. Call 480-941-1225 for more details
GARDEN TOURS
First off the bat is the Valley of the Sun Gardeners garden tour on Saturday March 23th from 10- 4. Five dollars buys you admission to seven gardens-most of them are in central Phoenix. You may purchase tickets in advanced at the store or purchases tickets the day of the event at one of the tour gardens.
Also on March 23 is the garden conservancy open days with four private gardens. Two are in Phoenix and two are in paradise valley for information call 480-941-1225.
March 30th is the first master gardener Real gardens for Real People Tour. Five gardens located in Chandler, Gilbert and Mesa are featured. The nice thing about this tour is each garden will be a learning experience with lectures on tree care, composting, irrigation etc. Call Val Carsey at 623-849-4956 or perflowers@aol.com for more details. We will also be selling tickets at the store.