Preparing Your Garden for Winter: 101

Negosentro | Preparing Your Garden for Winter: 101 | When the sun is shining in your garden, and you are relaxing on the lounger with a cocktail, the last thing you want to be thinking about is maintenance and upkeep. 

However, to protect your flowers, plants, shrubs, and trees, not to mention furniture and decking, against harsh weather conditions, you only need to complete small tasks every so often throughout summer and fall. 

Prune & Cut Back Large Trees 

Deep-seated roots from trees can cause untold damage and can be responsible for large and costly areas of damage to outhouses, greenhouses, garages, and even houses when they are not monitored and maintained by the owner. 

Look for the Best tree trimming service in Orlando and take the stress and worry about such possible eventualities by letting the professional tree experts cut back trees and large shrubs for you, making sure they are ready to bloom once more in the spring. 

Fertilize Your Lawn

Whether you are fortunate enough to own a large, sprawling mass of grass or else have cultivated a more modest yet just as beautiful patch of lawn, you must find the time to fertilize it before the arrival of winter.

Follow these simple steps to ensure you fertilize your lawn properly and thoroughly:

1. Rake the whole lawn to reduce and eradicate any build-up of thatch 
2. Aerate the grass with a large and strong garden fork
3. Apply a thick and generous covering of compost, sand, and loam 

Generously Cover Flower Beds

Contrary to what you may have been taught, and even though it is better than not at all, adding compost in the spring to your flower and garden beds does not allow the soil to soak enough nutrients into the bed. 

Instead, in the mid-to-late fall, add between two and three inches of well-rotted compost or manure to the top of your beds before layering mulch or straw (a small and narrow layer) across the top, the latter preventing the erosion of the soil in winter. 

Allow Watering Systems to Drain 

Although frozen pipes in the context of your home’s plumbing system are considerably more serious, you still do not want your sprinkler, hosepipe, or other garden watering system to freeze over and ruin over the winter months. 

Turn off the water supply to your sprinkler and, ideally, bring everything into the shed, greenhouse, or garage. If you intend on leaving everything outside, take the time to use an air compressor to blast the last of the water from the system first.

Prune the Roses

Finally, and particularly pertinent as roses are amongst the most popular flower in gardens up and down the country, you also need to prune each rose bush. 

Remove any dying, diseased or dead petals and carcasses from each stem, and once the frost arrives, make sure you cover the soil with well-rotted compost or dead leaves all the way up to the point where the base of the roots connect to the individual stems.