Gardening is enjoyed by so many people – it can ease stress, keep you limber, and even improve your mood! To help keep your plants healthy, productive, and beautiful, the 2015 UMass Garden Calendar offers guidelines and tips on how and when to fertilize flowering plants, calculating the area of your garden, how to get a soil test, the types of fertilizers for flowers, and using organic matter.

Properly fertilized plants are healthier, more productive and more beautiful. Plants that are stressed are often more susceptible to disease and insect problems. Even if you start with great garden soil, as your plants grow, they use some of the nutrients that are present and leave the soil less fertile. Rainfall washes out some nutrients and those tasty vegetables and beautiful flowers you grew last year took nutrients from the soil to build those plant tissues. By testing your soil and providing the right amount of fertilizer to your garden, you ensure that this year’s plants have the nutrients they need to flourish.

Each year, the Garden Calendar presents a selection of plants chosen by the UMass Extension Landscape, Nursery & Urban Forestry staff for pest resistance, adaptability to specific growing environments, and seasonal effectiveness. A brief description accompanies each photo to help understand these plant choices. Furthermore, daily gardening tips provide information on garden pests and management strategies to help gardeners reduce pesticide usage. Also included are “how-to and when” tips such as dates to plant peas, renovate lawns, prune and fertilize roses, conserve water in the landscape, and many more.

Our perennial wish is that you enjoy this calendar as much as we enjoy producing it, and that it is helpful in all your gardening endeavors.

Single copies of the 2015 calendar are $12 each. Visit https://ecommerce.umass.edu/extsales to order online with a credit card.