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The earliest blooms that you often find in the garden are those of the spring flowering shrubs. Shrubs are a wonderful addition to your garden, because once the blooms die back in late spring, you are still left with a beautiful backdrop of green for your flowerbed.
To take full advantage of your spring flowering shrubs, you really need to start the autumn before. This is the ideal time to plant your shrubs, as they have time to acclimate and develop root structure before they must concentrate their energies on making blooms.
The first step is to decide what type of shrub you want. Forsythia, Witch hazel and Orange Blossom are all wonderful early blooming shrubs you may want to consider. Once you have decide what you want to grow, it is time to decide where you want to grow it.
The shrubs will bloom best if they receive 6 hours or more of sun a day, but 4 hours of sun is really the bare minimum. Anything less than that and the shrub will not flower well.
Now that you have picked a location, it is time to prepare your hole for planting. Dig a hole as 1 and ½ times as deep and wide as the ball of roots on your shrub. Mix some compost or potting soil in the hole and then plant your shrub. Back fill the hole with the dirt, and then water well. When you water the shrub, that will cause the soil to compress some and you will be able to add some more dirt to the hole. You want the shrub to be planted at the same depth as it was in its container.
Once you have planted the shrub, apply mulch around the base of the shrub. You can use shredded bark, pine needles or some other type of mulch for this. This not only will keep weeds from growing around your shrub, but will also help the shrub retain moisture and protect it from extremes in the temperature. You should apply an all purpose fertilizer every 6 to 8 weeks starting in the spring when the buds begin to swell, and tapering off toward the middle of August. You will have to add mulch to the shrub once a year, and occasionally prune back any unruly branches, but other than that, your shrub is pretty maintenance free.
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