To help your plants survive the colder months, prepare your garden for winter. When temperatures drop, it is important to react in good time so that you can look forward to healthy plants in spring. But how can you winterize garden soil, perennials, flowers and vegetables? From covering garden soil to protecting sensitive plant varieties, below you will find some useful information and tips that are sure to make your gardening easier.
Before preparing your garden for winter
With the preparations you make in the fall season, you should be able to prepare the garden area for spring. If you need motivation to get the required lawn andCarry out garden maintenance in autumn, think of all the joys you will enjoy in the next year.
So, to ensure you get the same results next growing season, take the time to keep your garden area in tip-top shape. Plus, these gardening tasks will give your wildlife a head start once the warm weather returns.
Take care of the lawn first in the fall
Fall is a crucial time to improve the health of your lawn. You can start by removing weeds using organic methods to minimize competition for available nutrients and water. However, before applying fertilizer or other nutrients to your lawn, you should do a soil test to check the pH. In order to provide your lawn with the right amount of nutrients or lime, you need to know the existing pH of the garden soil and the availability of other essential soil nutrients. Too much or too little of these nutrients or limestone can be harmful.
If test results show excessive soil acidity, apply lime at rates recommended by soil test results. Do this immediately as its effects take time to produce results. If your soil is too alkaline, you may need to apply sulfur. In addition, the autumn season is suitable for scarifying and aerating the lawn so that the nutrients reach deep into the root zone. This also prevents soil compaction. Seed afterward to rejuvenate the entire lawn or fill in bare spots. Fertilizing promotes root growth and helps the lawn recover from the summer heat while preparing it for the next growing season.
Remove leaves and prepare the garden for winter
When it comes to clearing fall leaves, environmentally conscious gardeners tolerate a little mess for the sake of wildlife. You wait until spring to do this gardening work. Removing leaves in the fall can destroy overwintering insects and removes insulation for burrowing species. For example, many ground-nesting bee species rely on leaf litter to survive the harsh winter temperatures. Additionally, leaf litter helps moths and caterpillars, which birds rely on to feed their young in the spring, pupate. Centipedes and spiders also use leaves for shelter.
So before you clean up every fallen leaf in the fall, consider the needs of wildlife. However, decide for yourself how much winter clutter you can tolerate in your landscape. If you still want to remove leaves in the fall, you can do so using a device or rake to collect their leaves and stuff them into lawn waste bags. Here's another option: Before storing your lawn mower for the winter, you can start it with the grass catcher attached and run over the leaves to vacuum them up. Around theUse autumn leaves sustainably, you can gradually add them to yoursCompost heap for the winteradd. You can also use shredded leaves as garden mulch.
Winterize the fruit and vegetable garden
After you have harvested your last fruits and vegetables for the season, you should remove all parts of the plant from the garden. If you leave these behind, plant diseases and pests could overwinter on them for the next growing season. You can till your garden soil with a tiller after removing all annual growth in the fall. While some experts argue that excessive use of this machine could do more harm than good, some gardeners rely on small tillers. This makes it easier to control weeds in vegetable gardens.
If you treat the soil in your garden beds in this way, this is an appropriate time to apply lime or fertilizer. This is important if soil tests have shown that the soil pH is too low. The effects of lime take several months to manifest, so applying lime in the spring is too late for plants to benefit.
You should also protect the garden soil from the rigors of winter. To do this, plant a cover crop for large beds or simply apply mulch or straw, which may be more efficient for smaller beds.
Preparing perennials in the garden for winter
Perennial plants that come back year after year should be cut back in good time. Additionally, remove spent leaves and mulch the garden beds as part of your end-of-year garden cleanup. Traditionally, this work is carried out in autumn when the plants have died and the leaves have browned. However, the latest environmental trend is to wait until spring before nature itself trims and cleans up spent perennials for the benefit of wildlife.
You can also see wildlife such asFeed hedgehogsand to provide them with food and shelter during the harsh winter months. Also consider leaving seed heads of perennial plants for food for birds, keeping hollow stems intact for overwintering beneficial insects and solitary bees, and leaving spent perennial foliage for ground-dwelling wildlife.
If you can't tolerate messy herbaceous beds in winter, cutting back and clearing leaves in the fall will not provide winter protection for your plants and animals. However, it does mean that your beds will look tidier over the winter and will be ready for new growth in the spring.
Additionally, tidying and mulching go hand in hand. It's best to do both to keep your garden disease-free and well-insulated. If you don't mulch your perennial beds in the fall, at least you won't be able to remove spent stems and leaves. They serve as a temporary mulch that provides some winter weather protection to perennial root systems.
Trees and shrubs overwinter
To overwinter and protect small deciduous shrubs with brittle branches, you can use a shelter or other type of structure. This will be able to keep the snow away from the plants after a heavy snowfall. Deciduous trees don't provide much interest in the winter because they shed their leaves, so you don't lose much visual interest by covering them. In contrast, evergreen shrubs are the cornerstone of winter landscape aesthetics. It's best to leave these visible front and center in your landscape. So that they do not need winter protection, you can choose evergreen shrubs that can withstand colder zones.
In addition, trees and large shrubs can largely be overwintered by watering them properly in the fall. Stop watering in early fall, which encourages trees and shrubs to prepare for winter. This accordingly also prevents new growth that will not withstand the winter weather. After trees shed their leaves and before the ground freezes, you can perform deep watering on such garden plants. This can be a last bath for them before the cold sets in.
