by Lisa Mulder
Fall is here and it’s almost time to winterize our gardens. By winterizing, I mean to prepare our gardens for the winter months ahead. Here are a few considerations:
Trees
Winter can be very stressful for trees. Water your trees generously in the fall. Emptying your rain barrels onto your trees at the end of the season really helps! The moisture is eventually frozen in place and available for the trees in the spring as the ground thaws! If you use tree watering bags, remove them for winter.
Organics
Remember that gardens are “alive” with microbiota, worms, and insects and they play an extremely important role in our gardens. It’s okay to leave some plant debris laying around. We want to feed and nurture these populations by leaving some organics in place for winter.
Insects and Disease
Some plants are prone to disease. Peonies should be cut down after the first frost but before the snow hits. Saskatoons and cherries should have the fallen leaves blown out and discarded in the green bin. On the other hand, mounding your fallen leaves into corners and garden beds gives amazing shelter to overwintering ladybugs!
Snow/Moisture Retention
Capturing the snow on your garden is very beneficial. Snow protects your garden from very extreme temperatures, drying winds, and will water your garden as chinook winds blow through or into spring.
Weeds and Weed Seeds
To minimize the weed problem, it is a good idea to remove mature weeds prior to winter.
My approach to winterizing is fairly minimal. I empty the rain barrels onto my trees. I make a last-ditch effort to remove any weeds I may have missed earlier. It’s only too late to plant out the hard neck garlic, tulip bulbs, etc. when the ground has frozen solid! I move any frames or trellises out if I can. I trim the foliage that has grown out over the sidewalk – like a haircut – to make snow shoveling easier over winter. This is also a great time to look closely at your garden and plants to detect any new disease, damage, and pick up the garbage.
In my vegetable garden, I purposefully leave all of the “waste” greens on the garden as a winter mulch. I love looking at these garden “features” through the bitter winter months. In addition, I dump my finished potted plants onto the vegetable garden, and I don’t flatten them… I want to create natural snow fences to capture as much snow as possible on my garden.
In my perennial garden, I make sure to cut down any very large heavy bushes, such as peonies, to prevent them from bending over to press on their neighbours; put these greens into the compost. To keep the rust off my saskatoons and to minimize the cherry fruit fly population, I power-blow the fallen leaves out from underneath the bushes and put them in the green bin. However, I leave the irises and most of the other perennials alone… they look nice all winter.
These few simple steps really help beautify the garden for winter. Well worth the effort.
