Exploring Ideas: Designing Outdoor Living Spaces
While some of your plants are able to survive the winter months, not all plants can. As a result, you may want to be careful about which plants you add to your landscape. Otherwise, the alternative solution is to implement a number of strategies to help your landscape survive the winter months. By adding the right tips and tricks to your garden routine, you can maintain your garden well throughout the colder months.
Here are some easy tips and tricks to help you get started on your winter garden maintenance:
Mulch Bulb Beds
During the wintertime, one of the most detrimental things that can take place is when your soil becomes cracked from the cold. Once the soil is cracked, it can be especially difficult for plants to stay alive. Moreover, during the spring months, your soil may be in poor condition, preventing you from planting new shrubs and flowers for the spring and summer months.
As a result, you should consider setting mulch beds that are made out of evergreen boughs. These mulch beds will keep the soil moist and also protect it from freezing. This way, you’ll have an easier time caring for your landscape in spring.
If you can’t invest in mulch, then you may want to leave any leaves that have fallen onto your landscape. While leaves don’t protect your plants as well as mulch, they still do a decent job.
Water Your Plants until the Ground is Freezing
Just as the winter months settle in, many homeowners start to think that it isn’t necessary to water their landscape. Most reason that the snow will melt, thereby providing plants all of the liquid that they need to survive. To the contrary, you should water your landscape until the snow arrives or until the ground freezes.
The snow that settles on the ground can take several days to melt, which means that your plants won’t receive the adequate amount of water that they need. By watering for as long as possible, you’ll be able to ensure that your garden remains healthy and alive.
Put Away Items that May Freeze
While spring is certainly a welcome season after the cold winter months, it can be especially inconvenient to find that your ceramic flower pots, bird bath, and any other garden accessories have frozen and cracked. To protect your garden accessories and tools from destruction, it’s best to store them in a shed. This way, they won’t become damaged by the cold.
Keep Weeds Away
Finally, if you’re going to protect your garden from the cold, you might as well go a step further and keep the weeds away too. This way, you’ll have a much easier time managing your garden once the snow melts. To keep weeds away, you should apply leaf mold mulch around your plants.
When placing the mulch around your plants, make sure that the stem is still showing. The mulch should settle just around the base of the plant. With this tip and those above, you’ll be able to maintain a healthy garden that remains durable throughout the winter months.
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During the winter, most people think that you don’t have to take care of your landscaping as much. I liked your tip about how you should keep watering your plants until the ground freezes. That seems like that would make it easier to get your plants ready to grow back after winter.
Absolutely, these are good tips.
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These are some great tips, and I appreciate your advice to mulch in the winter to keep weeds away when spring comes. I haven’t been very involved with my landscape in the past, but I really want to make some improvements next year. I’ll definitely try using a leaf mulch in the winter time to make weeding easier in the spring. Thanks for the great post!
You’re welcome! Check back for more blog posts.
Wow, I had no idea that leaves could be a good source in helping protect your soil during the winter months. My wife and I are new homeowners and are trying to figure out the ins and outs of how to properly run a yard. We have a beautiful garden right now, but now that we know how detrimental the winter can be, we plan on taking this tips to heart and using them to help us keep our garden safe during the winter.
I would have never thought to water the garden up until the ground freezes. Like you mentioned, snow doesn’t melt right away so it would make sense to keep watering it. I think it would also help to brush away any surrounding snow so the plant has full access to the sun.
I really appreciate your landscaping tip about mulch beds. I always struggle with keeping my plants alive during the winter and so I’m glad that you mentioned it in this post. However, what type of mulch would be the best to use?
You’re welcome. We prefer to use double shredded hardwood mulch, however, depending on the surroundings in your landscape and the colors of your home a red or black died mulch may contrast better. The main problem with red and black mulch is their dye can stain your bare feet after a rain and be tracked in on your shoes.
I really like your tip “water your plants until the ground is freezing.” My husband and I just put in half of our landscaping a few months ago and we are hoping that our plants make it through the winter. We are going to do the other half in the spring so we will have to keep these tips in mind while we are finishing the project, thanks for sharing!