How To Keep Your Garden Healthy In Winter
Winters’ arrival is just around the corner but this doesn’t mean that the Winter garden can be neglected. Getting your garden ready for the ravages that winter can bring is very important this time of year. Neglecting the proper chores and winter maintenance tasks in closing your garden properly is only a recipe for a headache in the spring.
Here are a few garden tips to help you get your garden ready for winter. If you follow them a bountiful spring will be waiting in a few months time.
Clean Up
If you want an attractive, interesting and healthy winter garden, that depends upon taking steps in the late fall or early winter. Clean up the garden. Make sure that any garden trash is picked up before the snow flies. If this “trash” is left behind it presents an opportunity for bacteria to find its way into any cuts in the plant or onto the plants roots. Bacteria growth, and possible disease, on the plant is the biggest danger to a winter garden.
Keep an eye out for color when trimming
If you have had your garden for at least one winter season you know what has color during winter and what does not. Trim this color sparingly removing only maverick branches, but be sure to keep the overall form of the shrub so that winter color can shine in a uniform way. If you are not sure, leave it alone and get a feel for what has winter color for next winter. Another thing is if a shrub has a winter bud on it, leave it alone as this is where the flower will come from next spring.
Trim out the cut or torn limbs
Chances are that a torn, cut or damaged limb will end up dangling, or on the ground, as winter progresses. Take care of it early and your garden will look sturdy and ready for whatever the winter has to offer. Look for little cuts like from a knife cutting into an apple about an eighth of an inch deep. Look for a nodule on the limb (looks like a knuckle of sorts) and cut about one quarter of an inch above it on an angle for a proper cut.
Weed to a clean ground
Weeds also present a messy problem through the winter. Not only will they decay and offer disease potential, they will also continue to grow their roots until the ground freezes hard. This will only make them more invasive in the spring. Besides, if you weed to a clean ground you will have a nice clean contrast to the dormant plants in the garden.
A nice clean edge
Get yourself one step closer to a solid start on spring by giving a nice edge job to your garden flower beds before the ground freezes. (Of course you may not want to do this if you are going for a more informal look.) This makes for a crisp look during the winter months, as the edge freezes.
To wrap or not to wrap
In preparation for winter you may have noticed that some people have wrapped burlap or some other material around their evergreen shrubs. Generally, this is to prevent a snow load or high wind from damaging the plant. You don’t need to do this unless you have the potential for a heavy snow load or predictable high winds. The wind is an issue, but remember that all plants need air circulation, no matter what type of plant they may be. If you wrap your shrubs make sure to do it securely but with air circulation in mind. Caution: If you wrap a shrub/plant too tightly air circulation will diminish and present the opportunity for moisture build up and disease.
It doesn’t hurt to mound
Mounding around the base of plants is intended to give the root systems of a shrub or plant a little extra insulation during hard winters. Depending upon which zone you happen to be gardening in, the need for mounding is more or less important. If you do mold around your plants, you want to make sure that you compress the dirt of the mound with a firm push of the hands. This gets some of the air out of the mound and generally makes a mound of dirt look a bit nicer. It also shows that you took a little care in your gardening. This sometimes impresses people who visit your winter garden.
Trees are plants too
Don’t forget to have a good look at your trees before the winter winds start to howl. Look for any branches that may have grown or are growing across another branch or have died during the season. What you are looking for is any limb or branch that may rub constantly on another branch opening a wound in the bark. Generally, you don’t want to cut a branch as winter approaches, or during the winter months, but sometimes it’s necessary.
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