ST. LOUIS — Don’t be fooled by the warm temperatures. These beautiful days have many itching to get outside and maybe some are wondering if they can start in the garden. While there are some things to do outdoors, experts say it’s too early to go all in.
Temperatures near 70 have it feeling like a spring day, which may be a good time to start prep work for your yard.
“It’s not the case to be planting right now. Its such beautiful weather that if you can get outside and start doing some soil prep or bed enlargements that you might want to do that’s a good time to do that,” said Cindy Collins, owner of Hartke Nursery.
Sometimes over the winter, there are branch losses or even whole tree losses. If you’re worried this may be the case, you can do a scratch test.
“You just scratch the bark just enough to expose just the inside. If you see the green like you see here that’s great. Your tree is fine,” Collins said.
Area lawncare companies are far from full operations now but they’re gearing up to get busy in a few weeks.
“We want the soil temps really to be 50 degrees one inch deep for about 5 consecutive days before you really start getting anything growing,” said Joshua Paske, owner of Paske Lawn Care.
Paske says it’s still a bit early for preemergent.
“You really want to wait deeper into February going into March before you really start getting that down. But you do want to be ahead of that curve though when the temperatures start changing,” he said.
Days are getting longer and we may start seeing more signs of the season to come.
“That means more daylight, warmer temperatures, longer warming conditions if we can get sunshine and not clouds so we’ll start seeing this getting some summer, some spring budding if you will, coming quickly,” said Paske.
And while it’s only February, we’ll be able to start planting those cool-season, or cole crops, come March.
