Putting your Garden to Bed – Checklist

The chill is on and your garden is looking tired! Time to send it to bed….

• Empty any ceramic or terracotta planters to prevent them from cracking over the winter season.
• Roll up the garden hose and store it away, be sure to drain the lines and turn off the water from the inside source to prevent lines from freezing.
• Enrich garden beds with compost or manure turning into the soil with a pitch fork.
• Collect any dried or open seed pods to try and sow your own next year!
• Rake up fall leaves and mulch them (running them over a couple times with the lawnmower should do it) and use it to cover your garden beds.
• If not with leaves cover all beds with mulch mounding around the exposed crowns of plants
• Clean, sand & oil your tools, empty fluid from your mower etc…
• Wrap trees with burlap or create snow shields in areas subject to a lot of wind, install rose collars and fill with mulch.
• Once plants have gone dormant (after frost) remove any dead branches from trees or diseased canes from roses or perennials with a clean cut.
• Once ground is frozen flowering perennials and many small deciduous shrubs can be cut back to 3 inches.
• Clean any bird feeders, baths or houses your avian friends will appreciate this when food is limited.
• Plant any spring flowering bulbs, tulips, daffodils and garlic are great examples – you can even sow certain vegetable seeds that will sleep all winter a crop early in spring.
• Pull up any tender corms, bulbs or tubers and store to be planted in spring.
• Plan!!! Now is the time to begin working on the landscape layout for next year. Review what worked and what didn’t consider bringing in a professional to help you create your very own oasis.