Put the Garden to Bed

21 Oct Put the Garden to Bed

As we gear up for a less bountiful time of year, it can be tough to remember that building a beautiful garden for the spring season starts now. A “well rested” garden entails cleaning and covering up to stay healthy.

Continue your autumnal labor with these helpful tips to ensure a fabulous blooming season next year.

1. Maintain healthy soil. Even as flower and tree growth remain dormant during the last months of the year, the soil beneath them stays active, so a healthy garden depends on excellent soil preparation for the winter. You may have spread a mulch over your soil in the past couple of months; it’s time to lay out a thicker layer to protect plants and soil from winter frost. Avoid pruning some of the tougher perennials, like chrysanthemums, to add to your winter mulch. A well-prepared mulch maintains the temperature of soil to ensure rapid temperature changes don’t destroy your buds.
2. Clean up the last of the overgrown areas. Don’t wait to work on this task when ice and snow arrive and get in the way. Remove declining annuals, harvest all of your above-ground vegetables and fruit that has fallen beneath the trees, and clear out weedy trees and shrubs to avoid unwanted animal guests.
3. Take advantage of snowfall wisely. Snow can both protect and put plants at risk – knowing how to use it can make a big difference in your garden’s health. A blanket of snow over your lawn acts as additional mulch, but snow pileup on evergreen branches and those of other trees can cause breakage. Dust off snow pile up from bottom to top so that snow from the top won’t add weight to lower branches, and let ice-bound branches melt at their own pace.

For these services and plenty more essential treatments, give us a call and let us take care of it for you. You’ll be glad to have taken these precautionary steps once snow and frost melt and a fresh blooming season is under way.