Zone 6
Clean up the garden in preparation for the season ahead: Remove last year’s dead plants, rake back winter mulches, and top-dress beds with compost.
After you’ve finished preparing your beds, plant potatoes, peas, spinach, and other leafy greens as well as beets, turnips, and carrots.
Put up a trellis for tall varieties of peas as soon as they sprout.
Dig, divide, and replant perennials, such as helenium, fall asters, Shasta daisies, chrysanthemums, and phlox.
As soon as the weather settles, plant transplants of pansies, forget-me-nots (Myosotis spp.), foxglove (Digitalis spp.), and other cool-weather flowers.
Sow seeds of sweet peas, bachelor’s buttons (Centaurea cyanus), and larkspur (Consolida ajacis) in flowerbeds.
Zone 7
Pass by broccoli and cabbage on sale at garden centers—hot weather will soon arrive, causing plants to go to seed instead of forming edible heads.
Thin crowded carrots, chard, and lettuce.
Remove floating row covers from peas early in the month. Drive tall, twiggy branches into the ground next to the plants for support.
Mulch around the base of cool-season crops to keep their roots cool and moist.
Select new azalea and rhododendron bushes while they’re in bloom to make sure that the color complements your landscape.
