It may not look like it now, but April is National Garden Month and people are anxious to get outside and start planting.

Master Gardener and Jefferson Garden Club member Jeanne Myers recommends waiting until the daytime temperatures are above 50 degrees for at least five days before you should dig into the soil in your garden beds. She advises to leave your garden bed alone for the time being.

“If you get out there and walk around in that perennial bed when the frost is trying to come out of the soil and it’s still wet, you’re going to be compacting that soil. And that’s not good for the plants. They actually need the air and the soil, the air partials or molecules, in order to thrive. So you don’t want to compact that.”      

However, Myers says you can do other things to get prepared for the gardening season.

“You might want to stock up on some of the things you’ll need when it comes time to garden,  things like fertilizer and any soil amendments, compost or lime. Plant supports, maybe you grow tomatoes and you want to make sure your tomato cages are in good shape. And if you’re like most gardeners, you probably ordered all your seeds last winter when you were getting cabin fever. But if you didn’t, now’s a good time to do that.”  

She adds, clean up the area where you store gardening tools, sharpen any digging tools, oil hinges on pruners, and clean all tools.