How Does Your Garden Grow?

Here are a few of my top do-it-yourself gardening guidelines:

Preparing the Soil

Organic material is the most difficult substance to keep in your soil; living organisms are constantly digesting it. Topsoil high in organic material releases soil nutrients, holds moisture, assists drainage, and helps flora develop stronger roots and stems to fight disease more effectively.

To improve your soil, till in well-aged homemade or commercial compost, such as Leaf Gro. Add three to four inches of well-composted material to enrich earth that has never been tilled. Incorporate compost to 12 to 16 inches deep. At least 20 percent organic material by volume will create healthy garden loam.

Monthly applications of water-soluble fertilizers benefit annuals greatly, and applications of slow-release fertilizers when planting. However, it's best to err on the side of less synthetic fertilizer on shrubs, trees and perennials to reduce the chance of nutrient runoff into streams, rivers and the Chesapeake Bay.

Getting and Dividing Plants

Most people don't think about their garden as a nursery, but most perennials and some shrubs can be divided and spread around the garden. Many perennials grow quickly and could be ready to divide in three to five years.

If bearded irises are dug every few years and one-year-old rhizomes are transplanted in late summer after blooming has stopped, they have a better chance of avoiding iris borer and root-rot problems.

Divide peony rhizomes in fall only if you want more of them. To ensure flowering, transplant roots so buds are less than an inch deep.

Daylilies don't need dividing, but as clumps enlarge and emerge, slice off pieces and move to other sunny locations.

Pieces of autumn joy sedum roots can be sliced off clumps and transplanted, as well. Do the same with hostas.

Black-eyed Susans seed themselves, naturalizing quickly. Young seedlings can be dug and moved to other locations. Gaillardia similarly self-seeds.

Divide ornamental grasses in spring.

Some shrubs will grow roots where their stems touch the ground. Each rooted branch can be pruned from its parent, dug and transplanted. Azalea, forsythia, weigela, and winter jasmine are a few examples. Nandina and other shrubs that grow vertically with canes or tend to spread by suckers and seedlings like lilac and crape myrtle should be dug with enough roots for transplanting.