VWB Blog Gardening in the dead of winter is a difficult task. How do you prepare your garden for the winter? From covering garden soil to safeguarding trees and shrubs, every element of your garden needs specialized care during these months.
The weather in the winter can be fickle. Unexpected cold snaps and frequently changing temperatures can be detrimental to plants in the landscape. A few simple chores can aid in the protection of plants and the reduction of winter damage.
To maintain your plants and keep your garden healthy during the colder months of the year, there are a few things you’ll need to keep in mind. Here we’ve listed some of the essential practices.
Remember to Clean Up for the Winter
As winter approaches, it’s critical to ensure that your garden is disease-free. The best approach to accomplish this is to remove all wasted plant material. Remove any dead plants, old vegetables, or anything else that could harm your garden’s health.
Remember to clean any support structures in your gardens, such as bean posts or trellises, to ensure there are no lingering illnesses. A mixture of water and bleach will suffice.
Weeding your garden is also an excellent idea right now. Weed seeds germinate earliest in the warmer months, so it’s a good idea to pull them up before they start causing problems in the spring.
Get Your Soil Ready for Spring
Even though most people start adding soil amendments like compost and manure in the spring, October is a perfect season to use organic fertilizers like a meal, bone kelp, and rock phosphate.
In most climates, adding fertilizers at this time of year allows them to replenish the soil by breaking down and becoming biologically active.
If you amend soil during winter, you have already completed some of the labor when the busiest season arrives.
Mulch your soil or grow a cover crop after you’ve sprinkled on your amendments to keep winter rains from washing them below the active root zone. Because elevated beds drain more rapidly, this is very important.
Protect Your Plants From Cold Wind
You can protect them from the wind by pounding a few posts into the ground around young or sensitive plants. After that, wrap a burlap barrier around the stakes to create a wind-resistant barrier.
Wrap the trunks of young trees in commercial tree wrapping or burlap to protect them from wind damage. After the trees have matured, or in about a year, the wrappings should be removed.
Pay Attention to the Trees
Your lawn isn’t the only thing that can be harmed by fungi during winter. Because of fungal growth, any trees you have growing in your garden are prone to illness. Keep an eye out for disease symptoms in your trees.
Yellowing leaves or dried-up, withering branches are some of the most typical indicators of disease. If you notice any of these indicators, you should call a tree care expert to take care of the damaged trees.
Garden Beds Should Be Covered
The ground will freeze in winter, and before that, you should cover your beds with a couple of inches of compost or manure. Then to avoid nutrient leaching, soil erosion, and weed growth, apply a small layer of straw or mulch. Another alternative is to improve your soil by sowing cover crops like winter rye.
You can also simply cover your garden beds with a sheet of cardboard, black plastic, or even an old carpet and leave it in place all winter until you’re ready to plant in the spring. In this way, existing weeds will be killed, and emerging seeds will be subdued.
Watering in the Winter
Although it may appear senseless to water gardens in the winter when many plants are dormant, there are several solid reasons to do so.
During cold, dry weather, especially on windy days, evergreen trees and bushes lose a lot of water. These plants require additional irrigation at least once a month during the winter months if rainfall is insufficient to keep soils moist.
Winter irrigation is beneficial to even dormant plants. Even when the canopy is dormant, many plants continue to actively produce roots.
There are always things you can do to be ready for next year’s gardening season, no matter where you live. If you take these steps now, you’ll not only have a better spring and summer, but you’ll also have a better long-term crop. Indeed, these pointers will help your garden make it through the winter and thrive in the spring.