Bob Rocco, general manager of Mahoney’s Rocky Ledge, a Winchester garden center, said customers “are calling asking for lawn fertilizer and crabgrass preventers. We’ve already started to sell bark mulch.’’
“What I’ve been telling people,’’ Rocco said, “is that we basically have to look at it that we live in the Baltimore-Washington area this year.’’
But beware the buds of February, which could cast a long shadow over the weeks ahead.
Behind the colorful respite from gray weather lies a host of potential pitfalls, from parched soil to zealous weeds grabbing an early start.
Flowers may be shaking off winter two weeks to a month ahead of schedule, but so are plants that gardeners can do without.
“Normally, a lot of the weeds are killed by winter frost,’’ said Heidi Kost-Gross of Wellesley, president of the Garden Club Federation of Massachusetts. “This year, I have dandelions out there on my front lawn. You see them just peeking out. We shouldn’t see that until late April.’’
The other day, she took a trowel out to her garden. It sliced into the ground with little effort.
“You could go outside with a good spade and you could plant: The soil is that loose,’’ Kost-Gross said. “That’s not great. Normally, our frost line is 20 inches deep. In a colder winter it can go deeper than 20 inches.’’
Weeds are a prime beneficiary of soil that soft and warm this early.
“They essentially are the ultimate opportunistic plants,’’ Del Tredici said. “They know what to do with this kind of weather: They start growing. As long as the soil temperatures are above freezing, these plants essentially do not go dormant at all. The soil has barely been frozen this year, and that’s allowed a lot of root growth to happen.’’
Also comfortably warm are bugs and pests such as the woolly adelgid, which sucks sap from hemlocks.
Cold weather can “hold a lot of pests and pathogens in check,’’ Del Tredici said.
