GARDENING TOP 10 THINGS YOU CAN DO RIGHT NOW FOR PRETTIER PLANTS ALL YEAR.

Byline: Pam Waterman Correspondent

Don't have enough to do in your garden while you are waiting for spring? In a climate zone like ours, there are always things to be done, even if it is just cleaning up after the rain.

Here are 10 tips to fill up idle hours and make your plants happy and your garden more beautiful once spring arrives.

1. If you tend to be an obsessive gardener, you should have dozens of terra cotta pots. Now is the time to repot any trees, plants or shrubs that have been in the same container for several years.

Mix up a big batch of potting mix, throw in slow-release fertilizer, add turkey grit (small pieces of granite to ensure good drainage) and get to work on giving your plants a more spacious and nutritious root run.

Don't replant in pots that are dramatically bigger than the current ones. Most gardening books advise you to move up to a pot only 2 inches larger. This is a rule I often break; just be careful not to replant a smallish plant into a much bigger pot. It won't look right, and the plant can die in a container that's too large for its root run.

2. As you're repotting your plants, why not clean the outside surface of older terra cotta pots to get rid of accumulated minerals or caked-on dirt? A stiff brush and a cup of vinegar solution will clean much of the white fuzz that appears on the outside of many pots, courtesy of our alkaline water.

3. Most gardeners have empty terra cotta pots they can't bear to give away. Line those pots up in a row and make a list of appropriate plants to fill them. Go to the nursery, buy the plants and pot them up with the extra mix left over from step No. 1. This will add color to your deck, patio or outdoor rooms. If you have too many flowering pots already, they make great spring gifts for friends and family.

4. Every gardener has a heartbreaking story about how a favorite pot was knocked over and broken by the wind or a neighbor's cat or by carelessness. If you saved those pieces, thinking that someday you would glue that pot back together, now is the time to do it.

Buy tubes of epoxy glue, clean your pottery pieces, and then mix a batch of the glue. Line each side of the broken piece with the glue. Press the pieces together and wait a few minutes. Voila! Your pot is almost as good as new. The little crack line is hardly recognizable and can add to the patina of a terra cotta container.

Although I have successfully glued pots back together that had broken into five parts, I don't recommend repairing pots with more than three pieces. You might check the price of a replacement pot to be sure it costs more than the epoxy glue. When the epoxy is dry, get plants to fill the pot.

5. Pot up bulbs in some of those repaired terra cotta pots. Buy blooming tulips and hyacinths and daffodils. These bulbs look wonderful in spring but rarely return the next year for a second flowering. Our climate is too warm for them to regenerate themselves after they flower. Easy bulbs like freesia, ixia, watsonia or nerine are developed in Mediterranean climates and will come back year after year and require almost no care.

6. While you're potting, you might as well make your own mix. The advantage is you can make as much as you want and play with the ingredients to suit your garden.

John Keller of Monrovia Nursery reminds homeowners that some of Monrovia's potting mixes have 16 ingredients plus a base of peat moss or forest humus. This complex mix of fertilizers makes it difficult for the average homeowner to duplicate. Still, if you want to make your own potting soil, purchase bulk peat moss and forest humus, mix them with material for drainage such as perlite, vermiculite or turkey grit, and be certain to add nutrients to the pile. You probably won't save money on this operation, but you may create potting soil you like better than the prepared stuff from the garden center.

7. If you have a creative urge, you can always make pots of your own. Hypertufa containers of cement, peat moss and perlite can be created by pouring the mix in a larger plastic pot and then placing a smaller plastic pot in it. When the mix hardens, remove the inside mold, then shake the hypertufa pot out of the larger mold. If it's still firm the next day, you've got the right proportion of ingredients.

Many gardeners use this mix to make a rectangular trough that looks as if it's carved of stone. There's no end to garden projects you can organize using hypertufa mixes. Garden designer Steve Gerischer is offering a class on creating hypertufa troughs at the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. March 24. For a $25 fee, you'll walk away with a hypertufa trough that would cost much more at any garden center.

8. One labor-intensive but pleasant chore for a gardener is planting seeds. When you choose flower seeds, don't limit yourself to varieties that can be merely tossed onto garden soil. Instead, pick flowers that must be started in little trays.

When they get two leaves, transplant them into individual containers until they are large enough to compete in the garden. Such flowers as digitalis, delphinium and Canterbury bells are in this group. You can buy pony packs and 4-inch pots of all these plants, but that's the easy way. It is like adopting a teenager instead of raising him from infancy.

All you need for this garden task is patience and a small area where your seedlings can get plenty of sun. This technique will get you more bang for your gardening hour than almost anything else you can do.

9. Get serious about deadheading. Nothing spruces up your landscape more than a daily walk in the garden with clippers in your hand. For Christmas I received a small, 6-inch pair of Fiskar's flower scissors that are perfect for deadheading plants and nicking off the ragged ends of sunburned leaves. They sell for about $10 at Target and other garden supply outlets.

10. Is your current garden too small? Try volunteering to garden on other people's property. Currently, I assist a next-door neighbor with a small, drought-tolerant garden. I prune her lavenders and echiums, and water and fertilize a potted orange tree and asparagus ferns by her garage.

Maybe you too could ``adopt'' a small area of a neighbor's garden and volunteer to keep it spruced up.

CAPTION(S):

6 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) On the cover: Pink hyacinths - H. 'Amythyst' and H. 'Pink Pearl' - can brighten up a corner indoors or out.

(2 -- color) Now is the perfect time to fill all those empty terra cotta pots that have been sitting in the yard.

(3 -- color) When repotting, choose a new container that's only slightly larger than the one it is replacing.

(4 -- color) Learn how to make inexpensive hypertufa troughs at an Arboretum class.

(5 -- color) A blooming pot can bring needed color and dimension to any area with the right conditions for growth.

(6 -- color) A little epoxy can be used to repair a favorite pot.