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Prepare Your Garden for a Winter Sleep
In late autumn, the garden requires no fewer chores than in spring or summer. The main task is to prepare the garden for winter so that the plants survive it safely. A couple of days spent on care will be rewarded significantly next year, when the trees and shrubs will thank you not only with their beautiful appearance, but also with a plentiful harvest.
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Preparing the garden for winter is both useful and exciting: why not enjoy the last warm autumn days, especially when the weather is so beautiful outside? If you need to purchase any tools or decoration, you can, for example, visit your nearest Beesley & Fildes in North England. Let's get started!
Taking Care of Trees
At the beginning of October, fruit trees should be carefully examined for damages and wholly cleared from the remaining fruit. When removing it from the branches, do not leave the carrion on the ground - it must be utilized. You can throw it in a compost heap, but it is better to bury it deep in the ground somewhere on the outskirts of your garden.
The most important part of preparing your garden for winter is pruning fruit trees and berry bushes. It is better to carry it out in dry weather - necessarily before the start of regular frosts. The air temperature during the procedure should not fall below 14 degrees Fahrenheit, because at lower temperatures, the wood becomes very brittle. It is also advisable not to leave branches growing inside the crown of the tree.
First of all, fruit trees need to be cleared of dry, broken and diseased branches. When pruning shoots make sure the cut is as smooth as possible, without shredded pieces of bark. Keep in mind that humidity is an ideal condition for breeding spores of wood fungi, so it is important to carefully clean up fresh cuts with a solution of copper sulphate (1 tsp per 1 liter of water). Now the cuts will overgrow quickly enough, preserving the health of the trees.
Cleaning Up Fallen Leaves
The most experienced gardeners today fully share the opinion that the foliage should be removed on time: in the middle of autumn ideally. There are many pests and pathogens in the fallen leaves at rest that can cause irreversible harm to your garden. But there are also ways to use leaf litter to strengthen the immunity of fruit trees.
Burning the fallen leaves, of course, will allow you to clear your garden from sleeping parasites, but this way is very harmful and destructive for the environment. Fallen leaves should be collected in a compost pile to let it mulch and get fertilizer for the next growing season.
Refreshing Your Lawn
The lawn deserves special attention in the middle of the autumn. It needs to be properly "brushed": remove the fallen grass and leaves, and save the last grass cutting of the season for a dry day and leave blades of grass about 5-8 cm of height. Seed the bold spots.
You can walk on the law with a pitchfork and pierce the sod at short intervals. It will improve air exchange in the root layer. The final touch in refreshing your lawn is feeding it with an appropriate fertilizer (you can use the one from your compost bin from the previous year!). These few steps will make your lawn a sight for sore eyes during spring.
Loosening and Irrigation of the Soil
Excellent results in the control of garden pests can be achieved by loosening the area around the tree’s trunk by around 20cm in depth. It will make the pests and larvae that are in the upper layers of the soil die from the frost. Loosening the ground around the tree should be done with a pitchfork instead of a shovel - this way you will eliminate the possibility of injuring the roots of a tree, especially for your seedlings.
Since autumn isn’t always a rainy season (yes, even in the UK!) the ground in the garden might have enough time to dry up. This is why it is so important to think through the winter watering in advance. The critical part here is to correctly calculate the amount of water needed for each tree as well as determine the area of irrigation. As in any season, you should be careful to not overwater the plants you have in your garden to save their roots from rotting. Once there is snow on the ground, there will be no need to water them anymore.
Conclusion
The middle of autumn or even its late part is the perfect time to put your garden to bed for winter sleep. Making sure you have done all of the required basics from cutting back shrubs to covering plants to protect them from the cold will let you patiently and deservedly wait for new growth in spring.
Tidying up your garden first is the main tip that will help you decide what needs to be done next: add fertilizers, compost fallen leaves, repair the fences or implement a new irrigation method.
Plants that got cut back from the dry and excessive branches will now receive the opportunity to strengthen up in the roots area and will burst of energy when the time comes. And an astute reader will be able to apply this advice even outside the garden.
About the Author Laura Bennett
Hello, I’m Laura Bennett. I love nature especially when it comes to flowers and different kinds of plants. I started a very small garden behind my house and I named it Humid Garden. So, I created this blog to provide aspiring and inspiring thoughts about gardening for gardeners and anyone who has the intention of keeping a garden.
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