Tips To Protect Your Garden In The Winter

Your Garden’s Winter Protection Plan:

• Mulch – Apply mulch, compost, leaves or hay to help insulate your plants. Mulching helps hold moisture and heat to protect plant root systems.
• Cold Frame – Consider housing plants in an enclosed space like a cold frame or greenhouse. Frost and cold weather will harm and kill your plants, so protecting plants with warmth is essential. You can construct your frame by inserting plant-high stakes in the ground surrounding the plant. Tie the plant and construct a wall around it with material such as burlap, fabric, cloth, chicken wire, etc. Fill the cold frame in with natural insulation such as hay.
• Indoors – Bring potted plants inside. Check the pots and plants for insects that could potentially spread around your house.
• Water – For those plants that remain outdoors, water plants 1-2 days before a freeze/frost is forecasted. Multiple sunny, dry, cold days with consistent freeze/frost will limit a plant’s water intake and dehydrate them.
• Insulate – Consider purchasing a plant winter blanket cover (depending on the size of your plants/trees) and wrap the plant to protect it from frost/freeze. Make sure the cover is tied or weighted down.
• Snow – A layer of snow can actually help insulate plants. Cold, dry conditions are a bigger threat than snow layers. Excessive, heavy snow can be an issue – brush off heavy snow from branches, limbs and elongated stems when possible to prevent snapping and breaking.
• Avoid Pruning – Do not prune your shrubs, plants and trees before winter. Pruning creates “open wounds” on your plant/tree/shrub – your plants/trees will not have time to heal before the cold winter months. Even if your plants, trees and/or shrubs look overgrown, wait until the spring to prune them.