Preparing the garden for winter

Photo from Flickr

I wrote this post for another publication, but it was rejected. It's a bit out of date but the message to hang onto your leaves is still good I hope you find it useful!

A bit about winter garden preparation...

Getting ready for winter is a lot of work. I unearth winter clothes, make sure the heating

systems are serviced and put good tires on the car, but the garden is where most of my energy is needed.

I start with some basic jungle management. I have a deliberately laissez-faire approach

to my garden - shaggy wilderness is more appealing to the birds and bugs I garden for than

neatness and order, but the rogue trees and shrubs that have developed into monsters from

the innocuous seedlings I overlooked last year have to go. So too do the peach tree branches that hang over the patio table and the heavy overgrowth that is threatening to turn my shade garden into a deep dark den where nothing grows. After a satisfying day with a chain saw, (my favorite tool - a battery-driven delight that makes all this possible) I have a nice bonfire pile waiting for a cold winter day and a lot more light in my flower beds.

I move on to flower beds. Here again, seedlings of take-over artists like golden rod and

joe pye weed have bullied their way into beds that have no room for them and have to be dug

out. I have allowed annuals to shed seeds before I remove them, in the hope that free plants

will develop next year, and I leave some perennials standing, to give character to the winter

garden.

Earlier in the fall I salvaged material from the garden which I hang to dry in the barn.

These include hydrangeas, grasses, Chinese lanterns, assorted interesting seed pods and

aromatic plants like sweet annie and anise hyssop that will retain their fragrance after they

have dried. I get these in before winter storms destroy them and use them in multi-textured

wreaths that bring my garden indoors for winter.

Once weeded and tidied - with new bulbs added wherever I think I can find a space - I

rake leaves into the beds for winter cover. This is a natural mulch, and makes more sense to me than bagging leaves for disposal and then buying manufactured mulch. Some leaves - oaks especially - take a while to decompose and can make life hard for small plants next spring if piled in too heavily. I use them under shrubs and trees and save pine needles and smaller leaves for the flower beds. I cruise the neighborhoods for bags of clean leaves to supplement my own supply, and find myself in competition with other gardeners on the prowl for free organic matter.

Fallen leaves become leaf mold if piled and left to rot. They are nature’s way of retaining

and recycling valuable nutrients and organic matter. An organized composting operation is not necessary. They can be stashed in a corner - as long as they are moist enough they will be ready for use within a year. Or they can simply be loaded up over empty vegetable beds and turned into the soil in the spring. To make sure the leaves stay in place I drape pieces of wire fencing, salvaged from various roadside scrap piles, over the beds.

The recent rains have made fire permits possible, so I can enjoy the last, and most

satisfying job, burning the bonfire, feeding it anything too big for the compost heap but too

small to be worth saving for the woodstove.

Daylight savings has ended and my garden is tucked up for winter. I am now ready to

browse the seed catalogs - which have already appeared in my mail box - and to contemplate next year’s garden projects.