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I'm at one of my gardening thresholds when thinking about spring. When is it safe for annuals? My rule of thumb is that I wait until April 25 and then look at the ten-day weather forecast.

If the weatherman is smiling, I am ready to go to the garden with all but the tenderest annuals. If he is unhappy, I wait a week and look again. The main plants on my tender list are vinca, impatiens, begonia and any of the tropicals that we can grow as annuals.

My plan isn't foolproof and I may have to hunt for the old sheets a night or two, but it has proved to be quite reliable when selecting a planting date for annuals.

Many gardeners will buy annuals faster than they can plant them, and I am sure many perish during the wait. The best holding strategy is to keep them outside and out of the direct sun. Water on a regular basis but don't drown them.

Find out the low temperature danger point for each plant and then bring them in nights when such temperatures threaten. Of course, put them out again when the danger is past.

As usual, at this time of year when you think of annuals the first question is what is new and exciting.

One of the wildest annuals at the trial gardens last year was an annual euphorbia called Diamond Frost. It got about a foot tall and was covered with white flowers. This one will be hard to find this spring but should be generally marketed in 2006.

There are two new black-eyed-susan vines this year. They are apricot and raspberry. They join the yellow and orange thumbergia that have been around for several years. This is a vigorous annual vine that will fill a nice amount of space or climb five to ten feet.

For the shade gardeners, there is a new begonia called the solenium series. They may replace the nonstops. Although flowers are a wee bit smaller, plant strength and wonderful colors should make this one a hit.

Ball Horticultural has introduced five new impatiens in a series called Fusion. This is a vegetatively produced plant that will get quite tall and blooms well if buried in lots of shade. If you successfully tried the impatien, Jungle Gold, (developed by our daughter) last year you know the needed requirements.

Our daughter had a big hand in the development of two of the five new ones. Her plants are called "Heat" and "Infra-red." Availability here, too, will be somewhat limited until next season.

There is also a new series of annual gaillardias. They appear less sprawling than the common perennial gaillardia or blanket flower. I also am impressed with the flower but I'm not sure that there is a need for an annual gaillardia in the marketplace,

Of course there are improvements with many of the plants we are familiar with. Spring is near and someday soon the temperatures will convince us that it is here.

In a conversation several days ago a gardener was exclaiming about the merits of several clematis vines that she had planted three years ago. Since clematis is not on my list of plants that you can just plop in the ground, ignore and reap great rewards, I asked for her secrets of success.

To my dismay, she said she had done exactly what I had told her three years earlier. That wasn't the learning experience I was hoping for.

The most help I could get was when she stated that each spring as the first new growth shows she prunes severely, leaving only about two feet standing above the ground. Her claim was that since the vine grows so densely it would be impossible to do it any differently.

The first bit of needed information about clematis is that they prefer a warm body but must have cold feet, especially during the hottest part of our year. Although I am not an advocate of deep mulching, here is one place I would make an exception. Selecting companion plants that would shade the roots is another way to cool the roots.

One successful strategy is to plant a clematis under one of those great flowering spring shrubs that are worthless the rest of the season. Lilacs come quickly to mind.

As I check landscapes as I travel the roads, it is obvious that there are happy clematis in the yards at many Amish farms. When I asked, I was told that they add a cup of lime when they plant and a half-cup each year thereafter.

A recent paper I read suggests that clematis need a ph of 7.0. That's neutral for those who know that scale. Most shrubs and perennials are happy at 6.2 and lower. The hollies, rhododendron, azaleas, blueberries and the like need ranges somewhere near 5.5.

The middle range for most perennials and shrubs is easy in our soil, however one must work constantly to maintain either of the extremes needed for the above listed plants. To raise it use lime. Lime comes in degrees of fineness. The smaller the particles, the faster it will work. To lower it use sulphur, sawdust, wood mulches, (pine is better) and an acid fertilizer.

Generally, clematis death comes from unhappy roots based on temperature. I believe the small flowered ones are a bit tougher than the large flowered ones.

The major problem that baffles most growers is when the vine suddenly wilts. This is caused by a fungus that can only invade the plant through an injury. If this occurs, quickly remove the wilted part, cutting below all obvious damage and remove the diseased part from the area. Burning it is a good idea. Usually this infection is not fatal to the plant if attended to in a timely fashion.

To avoid plant injury and the wilt fungus be very careful when handling a clematis. The stems are quite brittle and easy to break. I suspect the woman discussed earlier has another secret when she waits until growth starts to prune.

I still wish I knew what I had told her three years ago but I am sure that the above includes some new material. My goal is to learn something new about plants everyday. Conversations like the above help.

The next time you plant a tomato plant, look at the lower stem. Most likely you will see little white pimples on the stem. As most of you know, these are the beginnings of roots. It is easy to get tall starter tomato plants but planting them deep best rectifies that. The deeper you plant, the more roots you get, and the better the plant.

Annuals with a single stem are quite forgiving of planting depths because they share the tomatoes ability to a lesser extent. If the annual appears to form a clump, then you must be careful to neither bury nor elevate it significantly. Gerbera daisies are the first annual to come to mind that will quickly get into trouble with improper planting.

Since many or most perennials are clump forming, be careful with planting depth. The rule of thumb in general is to mimic the depth in the pot you purchased.

Bearded iris need extra precaution. The rhizomes must be almost laid on the surface. If they are not exposed when you are finished planting you will quickly get into trouble. They will grow, but not form flowers. It seems to me that over time they burrow deeper into the ground, but I've killed a number of iris before I learned that trick.

It might be worth a limited bit of experimentation to try planting some a bit deep, maybe half an inch or so, to see whether it will slow growth. It works with daylilies. If they are planted a bit deep they grow rather slowly. To get bigger clumps for division quickly, plant them a bit shallow.

Grafted plants are a bit more of a dilemma. Grafting, of course, sets a desirable plant on roots of a similar but less desirable plant. This can occur for one of two reasons. A weak growing top is put on vigorous roots to increase growth or a vigorous top can be placed on weaker roots to slow growth. It is also possible to use grafting to get some plants that are almost impossible to root on their own.

It is important to know which is happening. You often plant the weak top, strong root combination deep, even burying the graft, in hope that the weak top will put out some roots. If this happens, you will get a stronger plant. The winter witch hazel and tree peonies are two examples that quickly come to mind.

The strong top, weak root combination is used to produce dwarf fruit trees. Here it is necessary to keep the graft just above the ground level to prevent possible rooting. As a matter of fact, the higher the graft is out of the ground, the smaller the finished tree.

In both cases the more of the rootstock that is exposed to the surface, the more suckers you can get. These need to be removed, since in ornamentals they are generally much more vigorous than the desired plant.

This whole article formed in my mind after reading a bit of a pamphlet that focused on proper planting of trees. With larger woody plants it is important to nearly match the previous growing level.

If you are using something that is bare-root you should be able to spot the previous soil line rather easily. If your plant was container grown match the container surface to the ground line. The pamphlet gave a margin of error of only one inch up or down.

It also emphasized that care must to be taken to get the hole no deeper than the root-ball or container. They were concerned that gravity working with rainfall would sink the tree too deep if the hole was dug too deeply.

Planting depths are critical to plant growth and survival. Learn a bit about what you are planting and try to match the ground level to the level it grew at before, unless you have a good reason not to.

Unless your house is located in the middle of a blacktop parking lot, you have a landscape. Just about everyone has one. Few claim to know much about it, and I'm willing to admit I often fret about the subject.

Having attended numerous advice sessions over the last decade, I have spotted one common theme. Everybody says to start with a drawing. Recently, I heard a variation of that that I liked. Start with a rough sketch of your property. Then refine it as necessary.

Unless the editor played with my scratchings, I accomplished the nearby sketch in just several minutes. It shows the basic elements of my yard and can be the basis of much analysis and planning.

Probably the smaller the yard the more to scale your drawing should be at the start. Since I am showing about three acres, I'm not too worried about scale. A quick look at the sketch suggests at least a dozen project areas to me.

Each project could then demand it's own sketch and analysis. If you wish, you could then move to a more detailed sketch identifying plants, hardscaping or whatever you plan for that area.

The version of the sketch you see has been stripped of as many words as possible to ease reproduction. To clarify, the little square on the northwest side of the house is an elevated deck off the first floor. I often ponder whether the undercarriage of the deck should be hidden.

On the south side of the house is a recently build patio against the daylight basement. To date that project includes steps up to the ground level in the front of the house. The bricks are here to extend the project with an extensive walk connecting the deck, the front door, the kitchen door and the patio to the parking area.

The patio is at the top of a steep bank. To discourage rolling down the hill, some low shrubs have ringed it. I used mostly evergreens here; some are conifers and some are broadleaf. At the bottom of the slope is a long-standing gutter which could be hidden by a couple of fast growing conifers. A few large evergreens there would also serve as better cover for the birds visiting my bird feeder near the patio. The patio is also under a large picture window.

Once I finish the walk, I will need to consider landscaping the area between the house and the parking area. It would be a bit awkward to mow, so that is a future project. When I get to that project, I am already thinking that a low retaining wall will be needed to keep the parking area out of the landscaped area.

I can quickly see this stretching into a multiple week effort. I've analyzed just a few of the possibilities that surfaced from my quick sketch. Grab a pencil and paper and get started and I will continue next week with some questions and some thoughts.

As I promised here comes part 2 about using a rough sketch to guide your landscaping efforts.

Once you have a sketch, usually the first question is, is there anything I want to hide or any view I want to keep? From my sketch I might consider hiding the vegetable garden, the commercial farming area or the AC, in addition to a gutter just south of the patio which I mentioned last week.

These are not high priority items for me at the moment.As I sit here and write I can glance out my window and get a good view of the Octoraro Creek and floodplain just beyond a narrow band of trees. There are a couple of ponds in the floodplain that I like to watch too. For me I want to keep the view so I'll keep the area open or maybe frame the view with several trees.

If you have something to hide and often its you neighbors shed, his doghouse, his pickup collection or whatever then you have a place to start, The obvious answers are fences or plantings. Large ornamental grasses will provide a quick seasonal cover. Appropriate conifers will be slower but more permanent. Once you have targeted a problem the solution is within reach.

One of the hot topics in landscaping today is creating garden rooms. The argument is that you wouldn't build a house without rooms so why not make distinct living areas in your yard.

I may be a little too rural to grab this one with both hands but I will quickly admit that a landscape is much more interesting if you can't see it all at once. A curved path makes one wonder what is around the corner. A fence or planting that separates parts of the yard also beckens one to enter and see what is there.As the birthdays add up my vision of owning a hammock mounts. I definitely would need a secluded garden room to pull that one off.

On the sketch I also noted two areas where mowing was a rodeo ride. Notice I said was. Also note that one was south facing and the other stared into the coldest of the winter winds. The point is that I had identical problems just a few hundred feet apart that would need entirely different solutions.

The south slope is becoming a perennial bed with a few shrubs that are somewhat wind sensitive, The north slope is becoming a shrub border with special attention to plant toughness. Thinking about plants you won't fine traditional hollies, hydrangeas, crape myrtles or plants that like cool feet on that north slope.

I could ramble on about possible but in the last several several paragraphs I identified two areas that are being planted. Here is the opportunity to make your sketch more specific if you wish. Maybe you will get very specific about the size of the area and begin to identify plants and their placement.

Plant size and planting distances, if left to chance will often yield mistakes. We tend to plant things too close. Right now a three year old rosy twigged shrub dogwood and a traditional forsytha are trying to gain favor with me. They are planted too close together and one of them has to go.

Landscaping need not be too intimidating but I'm sure I will see many of you as you rush to the nursery and greenhouse this spring a grab the plants that catch your attention at that moment. Some gardeners have detailed plans. Some don't. All enjoy the benefits of playing in the dirt.

Weeds are the scourges of most gardens. A week or so ago I attended a garden symposium sponsored by the Master Gardeners of Lancaster County. One of the speakers talked about weeds and I will try to share some of his thoughts.

To fight weeds you must know the enemy. Are they annual? Are they perennial? What time of the season do they present their ugly faces? We'll define a weed as a plant that grows where we don't want it.

Annual weeds are the easy ones. Shallow cultivation is the best cure here. Spring growth of summer weeds starts as the forsythia starts to drop their yellow petals. Right now we see annual winter weeds like chickweed and shepherd's purse.

Pick a tool (hoe) that will just scratch the surface at one half inch or less. The reason for the parenthesis is that a light narrow hoe works well, but they also make tools specifically for this task. Since cultivation will bring weed seeds to the surface and give them the opportunity to germinate; the less dirt we move, the better.

If you are working on the current crop of winter annuals, they should be removed from the garden as they re-root quite readily in cool, moist conditions. Summer weeds generally will wilt and perish after a light scratching. One summer exception in my garden is purslane, which is a thick stemmed, reddish, rubbery, crawling varmint.

Research has shown that weed seeds can lay dormant in the soil for at least sixty years waiting for light. It has also been shown that the red band of light, which is most intense during the middle of the day, is the germination trigger for weeds.

Thus I offer the following good advice. Weed early in the morning or late in the afternoon. In the heat of the day, relax in the shade and share your newfound wisdom. I hope it works for me.

Perennial weeds are more difficult, and are often a long, continuous problem. Since they can live for years, they have food storage facilities in their roots. Mom tells about hoeing thistles in the 1930ies and winning the battle. You can wear out perennial weeds, but it is tough. They are weakest in late summer as growth and seed production ends.

The best thought on perennial weeds is to eliminate them before you plant the garden in the beginning. Frequent clean cultivation, suffocation and resorting to herbicides are possible answers. A thin layer of mulch is also helpful after the big battles are won.

General widespread use of chemicals is probably a bad idea. Use them to target only tough specific problems. He even condemned the use of weed and feed fertilizers on the yard. His claim is that if we maintain the proper ph (6.5), keep proper nutrition and mow high leaving the clippings fall we can grow a superior lawn without weed control.

For those specific problem weeds he offered a few unique application ideas. He used a long necked oilcan with herbicide to target a specific weed among desirable plants. There is also a weed wick on the market, which just touches the weed with something like Roundup.

I quit by reminding you that each of us leaves a legacy in our gardens. Every time we let a weed spread seeds it could be next year's menace or it could wait for our grandchildren.