Spring Flowers - picture

"you can garden early, you just have to garden smart."

These warmer temperatures may have you itching to get out to plant flowers... and joe ellis with the sunshine grow shop... says you don't have to wait... but it comes down to picking out the right plants... that can handle the chill of early spring.

"if you look at our flower shop 98% of what we got here can be put out safely right now."

He says hearty plants like... violas... snapdragons... strawberries... are good to plant right now "you can garden with pansies right now and you'll have no problems what so ever.

I've seen snow on these plants before."

And, don't bother bringing these plants inside or covering them up when the temperatures drop "you'll do more damage to you pansies and violas and other cold nature plants by bringing them inside where it's hot and the sunlight is reduced.

You're better off just leaving them outside."

However there are plants you should hold off on "if you're going to put out impatiens, begonias, and things like that, i think you really ought to wait.

It would be a wrong move to do that right now."

If you do plant less hearty plants now... you'll want to cover them on a cold night... and if you'd rather wait on planting all together until the last average frost in late april-early may... ellis says there are still things you can do now... "clean out the leaves from your flower beds, i was doing that just a couple days ago.

You can remove dead branches, dead blooms from old pansie beds that survived the winter.

You can start tilling your soil up, bringing in some top soil/compost blend from one of the suppliers around here and mulch."

He says this will make it easier when you decide to test out your green thumb in lexington... chelsea smith abc 36 news still to come...three kentuckians made it to hollywood this season on american c1 3 idol.

One is already going home.

And...a big movie chain with theaters in lexington announces