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Gardening Calendar January

  • Shake or brush wet and heavy snowfall from the branches of your evergreens and shrubs - the weight of the snow may snap them off.
  • When shoveling fresh snowfall try not to cover lawn and short conifers with it - to much tamped down snow will block the air circulation - plants need oxygen in winter too.
  • Keep a small area of the pond opened - if it is frozen, drill a blowhole and put a bundle of straw or bamboo sticks to stop it from refreezing.
  • Check patio plants and their containers.
  • Pay attention to the areas that are attractive in wintertime. After their leaves are gone some plants may require additional cover of evergreen shrubs.

Eco-friendly garden

  • Feed the birds. Pay special attention to pheasants - feed them with dry corn, sunflower seeds or pigeon feed. Attracted to the place the birds will come back in summer and help you to fight pests.
  • Take care of the birds. Check the nesting boxes: if they aren’t occupied remove them to some other location. Clean the old ones or prepare new birdhouses. It’s time to mount or hang them, birds will soon begin looking for new residences.

Gardening Calendar Febuary

  • When the days are warm you can cut out dry blades of decorative grass and withered perennials
  • Keep a small area of the pond opened - if it is frozen, drill a blowhole and put a bundle of straw or bamboo sticks to stop it from refreezing.
  • Shake or brush wet and heavy snowfall from the branches of your evergreens and shrubs - the weight of the snow may snap them off.
  • Trim: maple trees, birches, cherry plums, willows (except with decorative flowers), larches.
  • Check patio plants and their containers.
  • Plan new garden arrangement - winter is the best time for consulting meetings with landscape architects. Think about spring changes in your garden. You can see clearly which trees require special care or trimming and where to put more covering and color.

Eco-friendly garden

  • Feed the birds.
  • Spray evergreens and pests susceptible plants with paraffin based natural controls. Thin layer of wax blocks development of insects feeding on plants and also protects water from evaporating in early spring, when the sun starts to operate intensely.

Gardening Calendar March

  • Remove winter covers that protected plants and potato storage clamps in winter, clean the garden.
  • Spike or aerate the lawn, spray it for fungus.
  • Divide clusters of summer blooming perennials.
  • Prune roses according to their type:
    - ground cover, miniature i climbing
    - shorten the canes above 3rd-5th outward facing bud.
    - park and rambling roses
    - remove broken, dead or diseased canes 
    - floribundas and grandifloras– cut the stems 30-40 cm above the ground
  • Cut decorative trees (e.g. apple trees) sprouts that have run wild.
  • Regenerate cornus if you haven’t done it for several years.
  • Cut buddleja about 20-30 cm above the ground, trim tamarix.
  • Clean the pond.
  • Top up bark bedding around plants from heath family (heaths and heathers, azalea, rhododendron, blueberry) to keep shallow roots moist, assure stable temperature in summer and protect from weeds.
  • Prune: linden, plane and beech trees.
  • Plant shrubs and trees with roots you ordered earlier, remember to put stakes and water the ground around the trunk.

Eco-friendly garden

  • At night collect birch sap by tying a clean bottle to the tree, drilling a hole into its trunk and leading the sap to the bottle. The sap is very tasty and contains healthy sugar (fructose), microelements e.g. silver, iron, iodine, amino acids, enzymes.
  • Collect birch buds, dry them in airy room and store in paper bag. Its antiseptic, anti-inflammatory and diuretic medicine, can be used to treat diabetes and ulcers. More information at facebook.com/grabczewscy

Gardening Calendar April

  • Feed the lawn with a lawn fertilizer. Late April is a good time to start mowing your lawn. Check for bare patches and sow new lawn where necessary.
  • Start feeding trees and shrubs with compound fertilizers.
  • Remove broken, sick or frostbitten sprouts (except for those which bloom on last year’s sprouts, e.g. Hydrangea macrophylla).
  • Prune overgrown cotoneasters, berberis, creepers - as instructed; frostbitten sprouts of Pyracantha coccinea. Cut decorative grass and blooming perennials just above the ground to allow light and air to reach the new growth.
  • Cut down last years’ lavender, heath, heather and grafted willows after flowering.
  • As a preventive measure spray larch and spruce for aphid.
  • In late April fish the pond. Check its watertightness and turn the watering system on.
  • Finish planting shrubs and trees before first buds appear.
  • Plant new colorful conifers to add variety to your garden.

Eco-friendly garden

  • Check if birds have access to water, install new water containers. In return the birds will nest in your garden and balance your mini ecosystem.

Gardening Calendar May

  • Frost at night is still a threat. Cover tender plants which have already sprouted.
  • Mow your lawn.
  • Thoroughly feed the lawn and all garden plants – in time of intensive growing it’s important to feed trees and shrubs. Fast growing and flowering plants have more needs than dwarf conifers.
  • Spray roses for aphid.
  • Spring clean your pond, clear away plant debris and leaves, regularly oxygenate water.
  • Trim overblown spring inflorescence: forsythia, lilac.
  • Prune willow grafted on trunk after it finishes flowering
  • Trim hedges, improve the shape of boxwood and yew.
  • Spray boxwood for Psylloidea
  • Start regularly watering and weeding flower beds.
  • If necessary prune or cut new pine sprouts - at 1/3 of their length to slow down the growth. Pruning makes dwarf mountain pine dense and short, but black pine will get more dense in summertime
  • Visit Runów to enjoy azalea and rhododendron season.

Eco-friendly garden

  • Instead of burning mowed grass and organic debris start composting it.
  • Don’t let slugs and snails into your garden - put them into a jar of beer or grapefruit peel.
  • Pay attention to churring songs at night - if it’s mole cricket set beer traps. Birds can’t cope with their hard elytra and mole crickets can ruin your flower beds, vegetables and even grass roots.
  • Collect and dry pine buds, store them in paper bags till the season for colds and cough. Recipe for cough syrup at facebook.com/grabczewscy

Gardening Calendar June

  • Regularly water and weed lawn and flower beds. A garden without weeds needs less watering and feeding!
  • Train climbing plants.
  • Remove overblown shrub inflorescence.
  • Remove stock sprouts on grafted trees - almonds, roses, apples, pears.
  • When the days are hot oxygenate water in the pond.
  • If necessary spray tender shrubs for Plasmopara.
  • Visit Runów to enjoy hosta, ferns and colorful heuchera. Canadian lilacs (Redwine, Agnes Smith, Nocturne) are still in bloom.

Eco-friendly garden

  • Turn and lime compost material to oxygenate biomass and avoid acidification. Mix old compost with local soil for planting to save peat deposit.
  • Collect and dry birch leaves and twigs. A bath with birch extract reduces pain in the joints and rheumatism.
  • Collect red oak bark.

Gardening Calendar July

  • Regularly mow and water your lawn.
  • Regularly water and weed flower beds.
  • Trim dense hedges (larch, thuya) for the second time.
  • Trim vine and fruit trees for better coloring - using sharp secateurs remove less valuable sprouts which can block the sunlight.
  • After they finish flowering divide clusters of iris, shorten their sprouts
  • For the last time feed trees and shrubs with compound fertilizers.
  • Remove overblown perennial inflorescence: daylilies, meadowsweets.
  • Plant fully developed and rooted trees and flowering shrubs.

Eco-friendly garden

  • Collect tilia flowers and dry in airy room. Homemade tilia tea is the best cold medicine.
  • When the days are hot oxygenate your pond and water the birds.
  • Compost and lime mowed grass.
  • It’s time to make strawberry and wild strawberry preserves.
  • Peel the bark from willow sprouts and limbs meant for removing (when peeled they can wither), dry in the sun. Bark of the willow tree contains salicylic acid, the precursor to aspirin. It’s a natural remedy for aches and fever.

Gardening Calendar August

  • Regularly water and weed flower beds.
  • Regularly mow and water your lawn. Feed it with the sustained-release fall fertilizers rich in phosphorus and potassium (P+K) - your plants will maintain rich coloring and then endure winter and thawing.
  • After the fruits are picked trim crowns of stone fruit trees. Trim sprouts of walnut trees.
  • Remove overblown perennial inflorescence: rudbeckias.
  • Prune water plants.
  • Spray asters for powdery mildew.
  • Enjoy all the new varieties of this year’s crops that are now in stores. Plant shrubs and trees from the containers.

Eco-friendly garden

  • Compost freshly mowed grass.
  • Make stone fruit preserves, liqueurs and tinctures.
  • Pick highbush blueberries and freeze it for winter.

Gardening Calendar September

  • Regularly mow your lawn, aerate it.
  • Plant spring bulbous plants.
  • Plant conifers and broadleaf shrubs and trees.
  • Rake first fallen leaves.
  • Remove overblown perennial inflorescence: goldenrods.
  • Regularly water and weed flower beds.
  • Plant heaths.
  • The season of evergreen hedges begins (thuya, yew, tsuga, juniper). Planted in September they will fully root before winter and start vegetation in spring.

Eco-friendly garden

  • Compost mowed grass and fallen leaves.
  • Collect organic fruit. Make dog rose, berberis and cornus alba tinctures and liqueurs.
  • Collect and dry herbs e.g. thyme, savory, basil.
  • Collect blackberries, cranberries, blue-berried honeysuckles i chokeberries if sweet enough.

Gardening Calendar October

  • Feed trees and shrubs with the fall fertilizers (containing minimal amount of nitrogen).
  • Remove water pump form the pond, dry the watering system.
  • Water evergreens and conifers thoroughly before winter, otherwise hot March sun will dry them.
  • Rake and compost fallen leaves.
  • Mow your lawn for the last time in late October.
  • Dig out bulbs, tubers, and roots of tender plants that don’t stay in the ground in winter.
  • Mulch roses, hydrangeas and buddleias generously, applying a thick layer of well-rotted manure or bark chippings.
  • Plant broadleaf trees with roots (maple, linden, chestnut, plane, American sweetgum). Don’t forget to water thoroughly and stabilize the trunk to shield the trees from wind.
  • Visit Runów for Holliday of Trees and enjoy wonderful red, orange and gold foliage.

Eco-friendly garden

  • Compost mowed grass and fallen leaves.
  • Make Chaenomeles, aronia, blackberry, cranberry, sea-buckthorn and rowan liqueurs and tinctures.
  • Separately rake, collect and burn chestnut leaves.
  • Collect wolfberries, eat fresh or dry some for winter. More info on its medical use: facebook.com/grabczewscy

Gardening Calendar November

  • Nights can be frosty, cover some tender plants. Cover heath with conifer needles or netting. Mulch roses and exotic shrubs (Downy Japanese Maple).
  • Carefully tie column conifers (single thuyas, junipers, yews, tsugas) - otherwise heavy snowfall may break them.
  • Fill the bedding on flower beds to shelter the roots from frost.
  • Rake, compost and lime fallen leaves.
  • Water evergreens and conifers thoroughly before winter.
  • Plant oaks and decorative pear trees.

Eco-friendly garden

  • Protect maple and fruit tree trunks from hungry hares in winter. They usually pick the most healthy plants as their source of sweet juice. Use plastic covers or paint the trunks with animal repellent.
  • Compost fallen leaves.
  • Pick Chaenomeles japonica fruit.
  • It’s time to make sloe gin.

Gardening Calendar December

  • Check plant coverings. Make sure icicles and snow falling from the roof won’t damage any plants.
  • When the temperature falls below freezing, drill a blowhole in the pond.
  • When shoveling fresh snowfall try not to cover lawn and short conifers with it. Instead of salt use sand or gravel.
  • When temperatures change shake or brush wet and heavy snow from the branches. Frozen snow can damage fully grown shrubs.
  • Check the bulbs, tubers, and roots of plants you dug out in the fall.

Eco-friendly garden

  • Start feeding the birds.
  • If necessary feed squirrels with nuts so they don’t feed on your flower bulbs