Here comes spring, and San Diego gardens are starting to pop. Other than fall, this is our busiest time to plant, weed, prune, fertilize and mulch.
Plant Now
Although fall is the best time to plant perennials in your San Diego garden, spring is the second best. It’s also a great time to start replacing winter annuals and sow seeds for aster, cleome, cosmos, lobelia, lunaria, marigold, nasturtium, nicotiana, petunias, phlox, sunflowers, tithonia, verbena and others in flats or directly in the garden.
Manage Pests in your San Diego Garden
Control aphids, snails and slugs, spider mites and whitefly now to keep numbers down later in the year. Aphids, spider mites and whitefly can be kept under control with a strong spray of water from the hose.
Early morning or early evening is a good time to find snails and slugs, and hand-pick them. If that’s not for you, check out my March 2022 post for more ways to control snails and slugs in your garden.
Yellow sticky traps can also help control whiteflies. You can find these at most nurseries. Place them around plants like fuchsia, gardenia, begonia, hibiscus and xylosma.
Transition Your Vegetable Garden
Although you may be able to get one last cool-season planting out of your veggie garden, it’s best to stick with root vegetables now like carrots, beets and radishes. Plant these directly in the garden.
You can start seeds for warm season vegetables like tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, cucumbers, squash and pumpkin indoors in containers. Plant corn directly in the garden, but wait until soil temperatures have reached 60-65 degrees for standard sweet corn and 75-80 degrees for super-sweet varieties.
Not sure what your soil temperatures are? Buy a soil thermometer. You can find one at local nurseries or in garden catalogs.
San Diego Gardens Tips Source
A lot of information for San Diego Gardens comes from the Master Gardener Association of San Diego County. They are a great resource for all of your gardening needs including planting, pests, vegetables, and water use. They even have a free hotline where you can get your home gardening and pest control problems answered.