News Photo by Mike Gonzalez From left, Lori and Zane Kipfmiller of Kipfmiller Produce plant vegetable seedlings in their greenhouse behind the business on Thursday.

ALPENA — As April continues to bring showers to Northeast Michigan, winter weather is slowly transitioning to springtime and gardeners are ready to pick up their hand trowels and get to work for the new season.

Zane, Lori, and Andy Kipfmiller, the family running Kipfmiller Produce on U.S.-23, started to replant seedlings on Thursday in preparation for spring. The seedlings all had small stems with a few leaves popping out of the soil, which Andy Kipfmiller said he worked on before.

“On March 15, I started to seed all these at home in my front windows,” Andy Kipfmiller said. “The trick is to start them out really shallow. If I put the seed down too deep, it’ll never go up, or it takes them forever if they do. I get a little warm water on top to keep them warm. I like to keep them 70 degrees if I can.”

The Kipfmillers have been gardening and growing their own plants for 39 years, this month. They said that they write down what sells well every year and see which plants they should add or take out for the next season.

According to Lori Kipfmiller, one of the best-selling items is usually blueberries.

Zane Kipfmiller, the son of Lori and Andy Kipfmiller and owner of Zen Fitness, said that once the weather starts to warm up and the ground is no longer freezing, people should be able to start planting.

“Once the ground is soft enough, people can start tilling to get the ground ready for planting,” Zane Kipfmiller said. “We make sure no excess weeds grow before they get too big, so I’d probably start doing that as soon as we start having warmer days and nights when both times don’t have freezing temperatures.”

This is similar advice to what Jake Malocha, a worker at Netta’s Nursery in Posen, also shared.

He said that a tip he usually uses to decide when to start planting is when apple trees begin to blossom.

“That’s usually right at the edge of when you’re going to get your last frost of the year, right around that time,” Malocha said. “You should be fine once you start to see those apple blossoms if you want to be safer. Right now isn’t the best time considering things are still freezing and it’s going to get too wet, so any still water can drown anything you start to grow.”

Malocha said that when things begin to get warmer, he likes to put down a release fertilizer that gives plants about three to five months of nutrients. He also recommended getting insecticide ready because it can help with grub issues and deter ticks around the garden.

“The first Michigan produce that’s ready when we start is asparagus,” Zane Kipfmiller said. “If you want to get other things in the ground like onions and sweet potatoes, you can start pretty early and you want to wait usually by Memorial Day or after Mother’s Day.”

Both businesses begin opening in person on May 1, but Netta’s Nursery has opened its online store for people to pre-order plants. The nursery takes care of the plants until the middle of May when the weather begins to warm up.

“Just keep on weeding and get started as early as you can,” Malocha said. “And then freshen up your mulch so you have a good mulch layer for your plants and keep them moist throughout the summer.”