To Plant or Not to Plant: The Gardeners' Early April Dilemma

GODFREY – This time of year becomes a sort of guessing game or limbo for gardeners.

As April reaches its height, many people want to set their soft plants, including the majority of vegetables and flowers. While spring has officially sprung, the looming dread of frost still lingers. Frost most likely will not kill plants, but it will definitely harm them – especially their leaves. Because of the threat of frost, many people wait until later in the month to start their gardens and elaborate floral displays.

Plant Stand Manager David Galbreath, who also manages wholesale nursery Green Earth Greenhouse, said late frosts have been increasingly common within the last five years. He said frost came after Mother's Day in the heart of May within recent years.

“If you talk to the old-timers, they go by the Farmer's Almanac,” he said. “It says to plant after the last full moon in April, which usually comes around the 19^th or 20^th. I don't know what it is about that night, but they say to plant after it.”

Galbreath was accurate with his assertion it would come on the 19^th or 20^th, as this year's April full moon, known as “The Pink Moon,” will fall on April 19.

While that moon is more than a week away, Galbreath said he is selling soft vegetation from the Plant Stand's new location at 3100 Godfrey Road near the intersection with Martin Luther King Highway. He said flowers such as petunias and pansies are hardy enough to weather a frost. He said the same of most perennials – at least for their roots and vegetation, blooms, he said, may well be lost.

As of now, however, a frost is not in the immediate forecast. Meteorologists from the National Weather Service (NWS) in St. Louis are predicting cooler temperatures this weekend, but not frost. With a rain system moving into the area Saturday night through Sunday morning, temperatures are expected to drop into the 40s by Sunday morning, and into the upper 30s by Monday morning. Even though these are chilly, they are not frost-causing.

If temperatures do lower later in the season, Galbreath said people with at-risk plants can move their plants indoors or at least under some cover. He said even covering them with a cloth could prevent the worst of the possible damage. The most effective way to prevent frost damage, however, is to awake in the predawn hours and spray the frost from the leaves with a hose.

“That's what they do down in Florida with the orange groves when it frosts down there,” he said. “They put sprinklers out there that start around 4 or 5 in the morning and go until the frost threat goes away.”

Galbreath said the Plant Stand has been selling soft vegetation since the weather looks nice, at least in the near future.

More like this: