Putting Your Garden to Sleep for the Winter – Some of us like our gardens to have a natural look – basically letting it do its own thing and grow wild. Others want to maintain some kind of order. Whichever camp you belong in, a little basic gardening TLC will help your green space be healthy and ready for the next growing season whether you’re planning a wildlife haven, a practical vegetable patch or a combination with attractive flowering borders. Just give it a few hours between now and winter with these simple jobs.
Putting Your Garden to Sleep for the Winter
Putting Your Garden to Sleep for the Winter – Clear Your Canvas
It’s always easier to tackle bigger jobs when you’re not working around pieces of furniture or play items that won’t get touched again till next spring.
Putting larger items into self-storage for the duration has two main benefits:
- Pathways, patios, decks, and terraces are clear and quicker to sweep or clean, and there are fewer leaf and litter traps that can create slippery moss or mould, or harbour pests and disease.
- Your expensive outdoor items will last longer and stay good-looking when they’re not left out in the elements through the worst of the winter weather.
Storage unit cost per month is probably less than you think, and they’re all over the country in easy-to-access locations.
Tend Your Lawn
If you have lawn, it’s often the largest growing thing in the garden, and you will have noticed how just mowing it makes the entire space look more cared for.
At this time of year, grab every chance you get to run the mower over it when it’s dry enough. You could go a step further and remove any thatch or moss with your garden rake. Use a moss killer on the moss first, then rake out the dead patches and reseed them. If September has past and you didn’t get round to raking or scarifying, leave it as the grass won’t have time to recover before winter. Just try and keep grass trimmed until it’s stopped growing.
As autumn progresses, keep on top of gathering up fallen leaves. Compost them if you can, using either a compost bin or just a black plastic bin bag if you don’t have a bin. Poke holes in the bags of leaves and leave them to rot down. The resulting leaf mould is full of nutrients for mulching.
Once you’ve mowed for the final time, the mower and any other larger pieces of equipment that take up storage space can be added to your self storage unit. Clean and oil all the moving parts so they’re good to go as soon as you need them next year.
Putting Your Garden to Sleep for the Winter – Tidy the Beds and Borders
Dig up spent flowering plants and prune the ones that benefit from autumn pruning. You can either put dead and dying border plants into the compost or just bury them under the soil for the worms.
Some spent vegetable plants are especially good to bury as they help to lock nitrogen into the soil. The bean and pea families are especially effective, so don’t just throw away the plants once they’ve stopped cropping.
Putting Your Garden to Sleep for the Winter – Clean Up Paths, Patios, and Fences.
If you have a pressure washer, use it to get rid of accumulated moss in shady areas. Pay special attention to walkways or steps in the garden as these can get really slippery in cold, damp weather. It helps to scrub the area with a stiff yard brush first to dislodge packed dirt or moss.
Now is also a good time to inspect your fences, while they’re not partially hidden by plants or leaves on trees and shrubs. Do any needed repairs or maintenance such as weatherproofing while you can easily get to them.
Putting Your Garden to Sleep for the Winter – Look to the Future
Autumn is a great time to plant bulbs, so you get a burst of colour in early spring. If your ground is still hard after being baked through the summer, you can plant bulbs in pots then transfer them to the soil when they’ve established some growth and their leaves are showing. Shrubs are best planted in autumn too, so this is a good time to extend your collection. Dig in plenty of compost before you plant, and they’ll get off to a good start. There are more tips here for autumn planting.
Even things like investing in seating or things like a hammock with stand can be worth doing in the winter. Store them correctly and they’ll last well into summer and beyond!
Spending just a few hours over the next couple of weekends will make a huge difference. As well as having a lovely tidy garden through the winter, you can feel a bit smug that you’ll hit spring running and be ready to take advantage of warmer weather straight away.
*Collaborative post