MENUA good starting point for planning your 2015 gardening and landscape work is to consult your journal. Last May, I suggested that you manage your landscape by keeping a garden journal. If you did that, you’ve probably already consulted the journal to schedule this year’s activities.If you didn’t start a journal last year, consider it this year. Referring back to last year’s blog will give you some pointers on how to start a journal, the form it should take and even how to do it electronically.This would be a good year to start journaling after our long, hard winter. However, I suggest you include, prominently, information on the winter severity and any late start to the growing season. This will alert you to the reason why the growing season may appear to start early next year. It won’t actually be early, it will be at a more normal time.While journaling is good for scheduling planting, fertilizing and other annual gardening tasks, it is the only way to conduct an environmentally sound Plant Health Care (PHC) program. If a certain pest invaded your plants last spring, you need to check this spring to be sure they aren’t back, or to take action if they have returned.Our PHC professionals all keep electronic journals for each of our customers. They consult it before their monitoring visits so they know to pay particular attention to certain plants for specific pests.If you’re a casual gardener who doesn’t want to be bothered journaling and would just rather enjoy your landscape, we have the professionals who can take as much, or as little work off your plate as you want.Gardening should be fun. If it isn’t fun for you but you enjoy the results, that’s when it’s time to call in the pros.
