This is not my beautiful house. It’s the back of our neighbor’s house, as seen from our back deck.
You might not think there’s much to say on a gardening blog in the winter, but there is. I’ve had several mini-panic attacks over the past few months, convinced that I’m slowly killing everything and that my yard will look like something out of a scene from Fallout come spring.
I’ve just put off writing about any of this until now because of a whole lot of other things going on in my life — namely, wrapping up my old job and preparing to start a new one, traveling for the holidays and preparing for the 2019 Cincinnati Rollergirls season.
But somehow in the midst of all of that, I figured out these 10 things you should do — and not do — in your garden before and during the winter.
1. Bring your succulents and other non-hardy plants inside.
Despite the fact that squirrels kept trampling the potted succulents I had on my deck last summer, I kept repotting them and brought them inside to see if I could keep them alive over the winter. Our house doesn’t have as much natural light as I’d like, but I put them on top of a filing cabinet in front of a west-facing window and bought this grow light from Amazon to try to keep them happy. So far, so good!
Apparently succulents need an otherworldly glow from a grow light to survive the winter. Maybe they’re also being warmed by this photo of Tank and me in Austin where everyone who visits Austin gets their picture taken.
2. Compost your dead and dying annuals and other plants.
I’m ashamed to say that I just threw most of my dead plants away last year, but this year I realized there was plenty of room in the large Earth Machine compost bin that the previous homeowners had left behind, so in went my dead mums, annual salvia, zinnias and assorted other plants that did their time. I need to do some more reading on composting, but fingers crossed that I’ll have an abundance of rich compost to work with next spring. (Note: Several articles I read said not to compost perennials with disease issues, such as bearded iris, hollyhocks, peony, bee balm and garden phlox.)
I feel like a compost bin called the Earth Machine should look more like a robot.
3. Prune plants and shrubs that need pruning.
I always have a hard time remembering what to prune and when, and what to leave alone. The Spruce has an alphabetized list of perennials to cut back in the fall, which made me realize that I needed to cut back the peony that I had planted last spring almost down to the ground (it never bloomed, as I predicted — fingers crossed for next year) and the irises growing in our rain garden. I also cut back our hostas all the way to the ground, after this HGTV article pointed out that doing so could help keep slugs at bay.
What not to prune in fall, says HGTV: spring flowering shrubs and trees (so I left my azalea and oakleaf hydrangea alone), ornamental grasses (I have none of those), climbing roses, perennials that are marginally hardy or have winter interest and perennials that feed birds (like my black-eyed Susans).
I’m also dying to prune my knockout rose bush because it looks so scraggly right now, but everything I’ve read says to leave it to early spring. Frankly, it looked so bad by the end of last summer that I’m debating ripping it out entirely, but maybe I’ll give it one more year.
4. Rake your leaves. Or don’t!
Who knew this was such a controversial topic? I kept seeing articles this fall, most of them linking to this National Wildlife Federation article, that said you shouldn’t rake your leaves because you’d be robbing animals like chipmunks, box turtles and earthworms of shelter and food and possibly destroying butterfly and moth pupae. Plus, leaves also create natural mulch.
However, we live in a suburb. We have a small lawn. We like like having a lawn. Leaves smother said lawn, and we get a metric ton of them every fall from the mature trees all around our house. Our village also offers curbside leaf pickup from mid-October to mid-December, presumably to mulch the leaves themselves. So we rake and/or use our new leaf blower pretty much every weekend in the fall, because if we didn’t, the leaves would probably come up to our knees.
We did leave the leaves in one small area between one side of our deck and the side of our garage. After doing some reading, I realize now that we probably should have mulched the leaves with the attachment on our leaf blower and put them on our flower beds last fall, because it’s apparently not ideal to use the leaves as mulch in the spring. Or is it? The internet seems to disagree on this. (Sorry, I can’t resist the urge to type “leaf me a comment if you know.”)
The fruits of a single weekend’s labor.
5. Seed and fertilize your lawn.
Our lawn care service came back a few times this fall for fall aeration and overseeding in early September, an organic-based fertilizer and spot weed control in late September and an organic-based root stimulator fertilizer in November.
Honestly, lawn care is still a pretty big mystery to me, so I was happy to let someone else take care of the seeding and fertilizing this year. Between those treatments and all the rain we got last year, I’m cautiously optimistic that we’ll see some more grass and fewer weeds in the spring.
6. Panic that you’ve killed the trees you’ve planted and get some trunk protectors to prevent further damage.
Around the same time we were planting our Rising Sun Redbud in our rain garden last fall, I suddenly noticed that the fruitless black gum that we had planted in our front yard last fall didn’t look so great. That tree is supposedly known for its fall color, but its leaves just looked brown and unhealthy this year — almost like it might be diseased in some way.
So I called the Village of Silverton, since we had gotten the tree through their free tree program, and they sent out their arborist to take a look at it. He said the trunk had quite a bit of damage from a buck rubbing its antlers against it (see below), and it turns out that this can hurt a tree’s ability to draw nutrients up through the trunk and to the branches and leaves. He said we’d have to wait until spring to see whether the tree would recover, and in the meantime, he suggested getting a trunk protector to prevent further damage.
Weirdly, trunk protectors turned out to be really difficult to find and/or ridiculously expensive, although I felt like I was suddenly seeing them everywhere. After calling a few hardware stores, Silverton True Value Hardware told me they could cut some black corrugated plastic to the size I needed. So off I went to get two pieces cut for our two new trees. It’s not the most attractive solution, but for less than $10 for two trees, it works for now.
7. Pick up some potted and/or hanging evergreens to make things look less bleak.
Is it just me, or has this winter felt especially depressing? I decided I needed to add some life to our front porch for the holidays, so I picked up a hanging basket of evergreens and holly from Benken’s and a small potted evergreen from Lowe’s for next to our front door (which I’m planning to plant in one of our front flower beds in the spring). Those two additions and the live wreath that a family member sent us for Christmas really made a difference in my mood, and as of this writing, they’re still alive!
8. Save those coffee grounds.
I knew this was a good thing to do in the spring and summer, but I didn’t think about doing it in the winter until my trusty newsletter from Natorp’s arrived, saying: “Save those used coffee grounds and tea bags and scatter them in your landscape beds, gardens, and lawn. The soil, worms, and plants will love you.” Done!
9. Panic about climate change when daffodils start emerging in January and then a snowstorm is predicted a week later.
We actually had daffodils emerging last week when the temperatures were in the 60s, and then the temperatures dropped and we got six inches of snow so they’re probably dead now. I don’t care all that much about daffodils in the first place, but I can’t help but wonder what effect these crazy temperature swings will have on my other plants.
Dear daffodils: It’s far too early for you to be emerging. Get back in the ground.
10. Take up a Facebook friend’s offer for free seeds and think about spring.
Last fall, I dug out the daylily from our side yard that fell victim to deer every year and gave it away to a neighbor who apparently doesn’t have deer problems. My plan was to plant deer-resistant, native purple coneflower in that spot in the spring instead.
As luck would have it, a Facebook friend and avid gardener posted that she had some purple coneflower seeds to give away, so I took her up on the offer to mail them to me. She also threw in some cosmos seeds. (Thanks, Nikki!) As much as I love the snow we’re getting today, gifts like this make me long for warm weather again. I say this knowing that I’ll be saying the exact opposite come June.
Is there anything else I should be doing in my yard or garden right now? Let me know in the comments!