Hit the Dirt; Plan in the Winter for the Spring

Good morning. This is David Weigel for hit the dirt this time of year I always like to talk about landscape design and last year I spent a lot of time talking about how to develop a site playin for your property and how to figure out how to do things in a logical order to begin with and I hope this year we all have a real good idea about what types of projects we'd like to undertake in the spring and what I find is that spring success in my case is always a result of good winter planning and I believe that's the case for the home gardener as well. Often times people call me up in early May and want some type of help with the project that they've been thinking about for some time and they don't realize that the arrangements have been made way in advance and I won't be available to help them in proper possibly until sometime in July or August and so that type of situation doesn't occur. With you I recommend starting the line up now if you want to work with a contractor of any sort it's a good idea to make arrangements ahead of time and let them know that as soon as the weather breaks

you need some soil delivered you need stone you need. It rocks whatever that you want to work with on your particular project you should have your list of materials prepared already and know exactly where you're going to get them from and get an idea of the cost of Certainly every project is limited by the budget and it's very easy to spend a lot more money on a project than we thought it was going to cost to begin with. Just by not analyzing the materials and the labor everything that's going to go into a project to begin with. Winter is also a very good time to visit the local nursery or greenhouse and to check on the availability of different types of plant material that we might have in mind for our spring landscaping project. Greenhouses are beginning to get into full swing at this point. They've got a lot of cases their geraniums are coming in and other types of plantings they've

got a lot of. Betting plants that will be started in a very short time and if you want a large amount of any particular type of plant it's always best to order the materials ahead of time because I found in many cases I'll go into a greenhouse and in May and the best stocks of particular purple petunias or whatever else that I might want is all are already seriously depleted so it's very important with any type of material that you plan to use for your spring project to line up the availability way ahead of time and consult with the people that you hope to be working with to make sure that they are going to be available. And just make sure you know what it is you want to do to begin with. A good site plan. It is not an accident it takes a lot of time a lot of planning careful preparation and and now is also

getting to be about our last chance to go through the seed catalogues and make sure that were going to be able to get any type of annual seeds that we would like to work with this year. Sources run out of favorite brands favorite varieties very early on in many cases and a lot of plants need to get a good head start in the particular growing environment that we have we have such a short season here to begin with that a lot of plants that can be directly sewn into the ground in other growing regions have to be started way ahead of time indoors in Maine so that they can do well. And there are many different seed catalogs that Sally talks about frequently I found that a Thompson Morgan parks so many different seed companies have a lot of different varieties that are ever increasing and so don't wait until it's too late as with any any job if it's going to be done well do your planning well in

advance and you'll be very successful and really enjoy the results and this is Dave Weigel for hit the dirt I'm hoping for an early spring. Talk to you in a few weeks.