Happy Cinco de Mayo, the fifth of May. The full moon is tonight and after tonight I am calling it safe to plant outside. I’m getting asked almost twenty times a day now, when can I plant? 

So I’m calling it safe after tonight. Looking forward to next week the days will be into the upper sixties to lower seventies with nighttime temps in the forties and fifties. Of course if you are on the northern end of Sullivan County you may still need to stay vigilant, but for everyone else, you can get your garden planted. I mentioned that I moved recently and our new house has a lawn that is more moss than grass, so this year I’m not even going to put down fertilizer or more grass seed, just plenty of lime. Now of course more lime isn’t better than the proper amount, but the type of lime does matter. Fast Acting Lime is a product made from microfine lime that is then pelletized to flow evenly through a spreader. 

It is basically all the lime and none of the stone, as a twenty pound bag of Fast Acting Lime covers up to five thousand square feet where a forty pound bag of granular lime only covers up to eight hundred square feet. The Fast Acting Lime breaks down quickly back to its microfine state as soon as it gets watered and because it is microfine it can travel deeper into your soil with just one application. Of course for mossy lawns like mine it will take liming both spring and fall for a couple of years before the lawn comes back to a beautiful, lush green. I’ll also have plenty of planting to do around the house as three sides of the house have no shrubs or flowerbeds, just moss right up to the wall. I feel I will have no shortage of material to write about for the next year or so as we get settled into our new abode. I was told this past Tuesday by the realtor that wild turkeys abound in the yard and that there was a deer that used to get fed through the kitchen window. 

Lily and Pebbles can’t wait to see the deer, they loved chasing them at our old house so I’m sure they will have fun here too. I brought our old kennel panels to use as fencing around our new garden this year. Of course because the ground is so acid and mossy, we are going to do most of our gardening in containers this year while I get the garden soil up to snuff. I’m sure it will take a lot of lime, peat moss and cow manure to enrich this soil. I’ll be using Foxfarm Ocean Forest soil in my containers this year and at the end of the season I will dump the pots in the garden and till it into the soil to really give it a boost for next year. 

I would never recommend someone buy Ocean Forest just to put in the ground as it is too good to be used for that, but after using it for a season or two in your containers it will make an excellent soil conditioner for your flowerbed or garden. All of our premium soils by Foxfarm and Coast of Maine will work great in containers for a couple of seasons and then just put them in the garden, flowerbed or around your trees and shrubs. The biggest problem we have in Sullivan County is heavy clay soil and by adding bagged soils to it you can start to loosen that hardpan up so that your plant roots can expand faster and grow larger. 

One last thing before I go. Mother’s Day is coming up a week from this Sunday, May 14th, and every year we have a sale of hanging baskets for Mother’s Day. This year from Monday May 8th through Sunday, Mother’s Day May 14th, not only will you save five dollars on every hanging basket, but we are also raising money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Two dollars from every ten inch hanging basket and five dollars from every twelve inch hanging basket will be donated to St Jude. This year you can get something special for the mom in your life, but even more importantly, you can help a mom that you will never know, who’s child is a patient at St. Jude. 

With the weather turning nicer next week and Mother’s Day coming we are hoping, with your help, to raise over two thousand dollars for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Thank you for reading and if you have a topic or question for a future column, just drop me a line at the store, I’m usually there six to seven days a week, but only in the morning.