After Rochester’s warmest winter on record and a relatively warm spring yet, gardeners are cleaning up their yards and visiting their favorite garden centers, imagining the potential of this year’s growing season.
Some local gardening experts confirmed that spring conditions for this time of year are about two weeks ahead of last year and confessed that they had already put some cold crops in the ground.
Further evidence of itchy green fingers are the full parking lots at local garden centers, where customers walk back to their cars with plants and lawn care products on particularly sunny days.
Irondequoit partners Andrew Bucossi and Erin Keenan visited The Garden Factory on Buffalo Road on a recent Sunday to purchase flowering shrubs. They soon settled on a potted forsythia, which thrived like the others in town.
Bucossi expects to be able to plant the shrub back in their garden within a week or two to “take advantage of the rain before it gets too sunny and hot for the plants to get established.”
“From what little I know about plants, that seems like a sensible thing to do,” he said.
In a city nicknamed the City of Flowers, it’s no surprise that gardeners are back in their yards, examining every corner differently now that the snow and frost have disappeared.
According to the National Weather Service in Buffalo, meteorologist Dan Kelly said March was the eighth warmest on record in Rochester, with an average temperature of 41.5 degrees. So far in April, the average temperature has been 48.4 degrees, about 5 degrees warmer than normal, although Kelly on Monday forecast below normal temperatures for the week.
“Oh yes, certainly. It happens every year,” said Marci Muller, Monroe County horticulture program leader for the Cornell Cooperative Extension. “The first warm period… Everyone says: I have to get to work now.”
She encourages gardeners to “go ahead” and clean up their gardens and even pat their woody plants – shrubs and trees – and herbaceous perennials like hostas into the ground. And of course there are violets.
Like other local experts, Muller said gardeners should probably delay the period between Mother’s Day and Memorial Day (or May 12 and May 27 this year) to plant green things that are considered more tender, like tomatoes and flowers.
Muller, who has already planted peas and lettuce, reminds local gardeners that weather is “infinitely local” and what works in one community may not work in the next. She also advises against turning the soil and seriously tilling it until the recent rains have subsided.
Samantha Kennard, customer service specialist at The Garden Factory on Buffalo Road, has a succinct description for spring: “Crazy time!”
“It’s the best time of the year. It’s basically our Christmas,” she said.
The store is gearing up for May, its busiest month, and she will likely find time to plant cold crops like broccoli and cauliflower on her Spencerport property before Memorial Day arrives.
“It’s always a gamble,” Kennard said. “It might be too early, and I might have to do it again. We have people like that every year who put them in too early, everything dies and then they come back and buy everything again.
“We always say Memorial Day to be safe. But that’s the fun of gardening. It’s all an experiment.”
For those inevitable frost nights, serious gardeners like Kennard advise early planters to cover plants with sheets, upturned buckets and other protective materials.
Kyle Van Putte, owner of Van Putt Gardens, 136 North Ave., doesn’t offer any advice except the obvious: “Remember, we live in Rochester, New York, so it’s not like you can go there to get your plant tomato plants and pepper plants. in a few weeks, you know. However, you have to wait until the threat of frost has passed, probably after Mother’s Day.”
Sue Lang, co-owner of Gallea’s Florist and Greenhouse in Pittsford, said this year’s spring is different because people eager to plant called in late March, “which is too early.”
Her company tends to only stock plants that are ready to be put in the ground.
“You have to be very careful with certain things,” she said. “We try to let customers know, when we have things in and when you get them, keep them in the garage or put them outside during the holidays. During the day, bring them in at night and keep a close eye on the weather. .
“Right away. It’s just way too early. Temperatures are dropping. They can dip into the low 50s and easily get into the 30s at night.”
She sees great potential in the 2024 growing season.
“I think it’s going to be a great season,” she says. “I think it’s going to be really lush. (With the temperatures the greenhouses are just really exploding. That’s always good.”
Rochester resident Maddie Sauers put some lettuce, pansies and violas in her basket while shopping at The Garden Factory on Sunday. The lettuce goes into a protective lettuce cage. The other plants will remain on her porch for the time being.
“It depends on what the weather is doing,” she said. “If it stays pretty consistent, then I’ll probably plant. If it doesn’t stay consistent, like we’re still yo-yoing, I might wait.”
This article originally appeared in Lansing State Journal: Gardening Tips and Advice: When to Start Your Garden in New York?
