Guest Post: Tips for Preparing Your Garden for Winter

The wind has turned colder, leaves are changing color, and the kids are back in school - it’s time to put your garden to sleep. Preparing your garden for winter is an important element of any fall lawn care regimen. When you winterize your garden, you make sure your flowering plants and vegetables are ready to withstand the frosts and frigid temperatures of winter. It includes mowing late into the season, covering beds in mulch, planning your spring garden, composting and more. Whether you’re looking to extend the growing season for your veggies or make sure your perennials and bulbs resurface in spring, these tips to prepare your garden for winter will put you on the right path.

Clean up flower beds

The first step when preparing your garden for winter is to remove dead plant matter and pull weeds from your flower beds. Dead stems can harbor insect eggs or spread disease, so it’s important to pull up old vines and any dead vegetables as the cooler weather sets in. Cut your perennial stems down near the ground and compost the clippings, too. Then, pull up weeds and trash or burn them – avoid composting weeds as this can spread them in your garden. This goes for any diseased foliage as well. Next, rake leaves from your yard and beds and include them in your compost pile.

Create new beds and plan for spring as you winterize your garden  

If you’re planning a new vegetable garden or new beds, lay down newsprint, compost and cardboard to eliminate the lawn over the winter. In the spring, you’ll use your garden tiller to loosen the soil and incorporate fertilizer, but you have to eliminate grass and weeds in the fall if you want to plant in the spring.

If you already have a garden, at the end of the growing season, remove dead vegetables and leaves and toss them in your compost pile. Till the earth, adding compost on the second pass, and sow a cover crop like rye.

Another great way to prepare for spring is to plant annual bulbs. Make sure they are planted at the right depth and covered with compost, mulch and evergreen boughs to prevent shifting and cracking of soil throughout the winter. Finally, collect seeds and clippings from your favorite annuals and set them aside or start them in your house to prepare for spring planting.

Divide and conquer

Everything you do when you winterize your garden is done to ensure it looks great the following spring. Throughout this year, you may have noticed some of your plants aren’t flowering as much, or are growing in clumps. At least six weeks before the first frost, divide these perennials and replant them in other areas of your garden. Timing is important to give the roots time to grow in their new spot before the frost.

Mow till there’s almost snow

Well, frost anyway. After harsh summer heat and drought, your lawn will recover in early fall. Keep mowing throughout the fall as long as your grass is still growing. Plus, mowing with your garden tractor until just before the first frost will help you avoid a long lawn that mattes under snow, causing disease and damage throughout the winter. Keep the cut setting on your garden tractor set high and don’t mow too often to avoid scalping, which can kill your lawn immediately or leave it susceptible to disease. When you do finally store you garden tractor, make sure you properly prepare it by changing the oil, adding StaBil to the gas and sharpening the lawn mower blades.

Winterize garden beds, young shrubs and trees

The last step to prepare your garden for winter is to cover your beds, shrubs and trees, starting with mulch. Despite what you may think, mulch isn’t spread over beds to keep them warm in winter, it’s done to maintain the temperature. Most plant roots can survive the cold, but become damaged if temperatures fluctuate between warm and cold. A thick layer (6 inches) of winter mulch over a 3-4 inch covering of compost will help maintain the temperature. Spread the mulch after the first frost to avoid burrowing rodents making your beds their home.

Use burlap or another garden fabric to cover the base of young trees and the tops of your shrubs to keep out the chill and hungry deer and rabbits. You can also use burlap to cover vegetables in case of an early frost. With all the plants in your garden covered and cozy, you can rest easy as your garden hibernates until spring.

~Barbara

Falling Down on the Job

I was out last weekend, touring a beautifully landscaped garden planted with varieties popular in victorian gardens, and noticed the rutabagas were bigger than my head. Surely they should have been long harvested, as should the tomatoes bursting on the vine and dropping. Although the garden looked lovely, someone was falling down on the job.
Of course, my garden isn't even beautiful this time of year. I fell down on the job over a month ago and haven't done a thing since. This as been the "fall" of sick and useless. I've been sick for six weeks. My son has been sick for seven, and my garden is nearly dead.
Today I got an encouraging email from Mother Earth News, filled with ideas for starting my winter plantings of spinach and other cold tolerating leafy plants, as well as carrots, and I want to do it. I want to get out there and cut down my long dead sunflowers and start putting together a hoop house, but we're still fighting off whatever it is that we're fighting off.
Halfway through my antibiotics, my lungs feel better but my energy just isn't there. Maybe I need to baby-steps back into the garden.
I'm probably not alone, anyone else ready to baby steps back out there with me?

The Wild Flower Book, by Donald Stokes: a Review

The Wildflower Book: East of the Rockies - A Complete Guide to Growing and Identifying Wildflowers by Donald Stokes

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This was very much written from the environmental moralist standpoint. That can be nice, but it can also be off-putting. I wish the pictures had included more than just the prettiest of blooms, but also pictures of the various plants throughout their annual lifecycle to help prevent the accidental weeding of precious wildflowers. The information could also have been improved upon by making it clear whether each plant discussed was edible or not. An occasional plant was described as poisonous or had a blurb regarding herbal or traditional uses, but on this subject, most plants' entries remained silent.
If you're wondering what that pretty flower you saw might have been called, it's a good book. If you're looking at wildflowers with a mind to foraging, it wasn't quite as useful.
I did appreciate the brief section outlining which "wildflowers" are pernicious weeds, rather, invasive imported species.

Mini Farming: Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre by Brett L. Markham - A Review

Mini Farming: Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre by Brett L. Markham

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


There are many parts of this book that I feel needed to go into greater depth, but at other moments, Markham breaks down processes in ways that other books I've read on the topic fail to. I appreciate that Markham expects his readership to be tech-literate and rather than repeating everyone else's research, supplies suggestions as to where we can find the information we may want in a convenient manner. At times it felt like I was reading a personal blog more than a guide to mini-farming, and the extremely casual tone could, at times be off-putting, I still found, on the whole, the information was useful and I learned enough from this book that it was more than worth my time investment.
That said, I don't plan to be the "crazy chicken lady," so that bit of advice was wasted on me.

Edible Landscaping: Urban Food Gardens That Look Great, by Senga Lindsay: a Review

Edible Landscaping: Urban Food Gardens That Look Great by Senga Lindsay

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


If you are looking for a book to give you examples of different types of areas that can be landscaped for edible purposes, this is a good book. If you are looking for copious example pictures to inspire you, this is not the book you are looking for. If you are looking for a quick run down of various different colored common edibles, this is a good book for you. If you are looking for a long list of edible plants, their growing requirements, and a few edibles one might not think of on their own, this is not the book for you. It's a good starting point with some great ideas for gardening with kids in mind as well as good information you will be able to use when you start planning your garden, but it will have to be a companion book to a more extensive one that deals more with plants than garden form.

Little House in the Suburbs: Backyard Farming and Home Skills for Self-Sufficient Living by Deanna Caswell - A Review

Little House in the Suburbs: Backyard Farming and Home Skills for Self-Sufficient Living by Deanna Caswell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The only thing I didn't like about this book is the fact that it made me want goats and chickens as pets for my kids. Slyly, it avoided talking about the inherent problem with animal ownership: someone has to care for those animals, even when you're not there, and therefore travel is complicated. Obviously, this means I should not be a goat or hen owner.

This is supposed to be a book review, not a discussion on why I shouldn't own farm animals, inside the village limits, that my son would love to pieces all while helping us be somewhat more self sufficient.

Okay, back on track. I love that this book deals with not only growing things and self-sufficiency from a production standpoint, but also gives concrete examples of what one can do with the things one has grown. Caswell and Siskin make a point of having practical advice, and even go so far as to include possible garden layout suggestions that actively include pest deterrents. Companion plant list? Yes, please.

I know that in the past I've occasionally voiced irritation with informational books written in an overly anecdotal and conversational format, but here the "blogger" feel translates well.

I enjoyed the book, and most importantly, learned even more than I knew this morning, including exactly what is happening to my squash.

The Edible Front Yard by Ivette Soler: a Book Review

It's winter, and I'm already planning my spring planting. Aren't you?

This year I've decided that I want to go predominantly edible with my plantings, because not only can they be beautiful, they're functional. Let's face it, anything is more functional than grass. Sure, grass is great if you need something for your sheep or goats to munch on, but we don't have sheep and goats at my house (at this point in time) and I'm so tired of wasting time and money on the gas powered goat, I mean, lawn mower. It's silly. Water the grass (okay, I admit I'm not a grass waterer, but my neighbors are), mow the grass, water the grass, mow the grass. We want it to grow, we don't want it to grow. As a nation, we have an identity crisis going on in our own front yards.
No more, I say.

So, I've been spending the long nights reading up on some alternatives, and I want to share them with you, then maybe as planting time approaches we can share some of our plans with each other and check back in throughout the growing season. It will be good old fashioned hard work with delicious rewards.

You with me?

The Edible Front Yard: The Mow-Less, Grow-More Plan for a Beautiful, Bountiful Garden by Ivette Soler

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


The Edible Front Yard by Ivette Soler is a good jumping off point for a person who is ready to start making the transition from growing a great big lawn of useless and resource wasting grass to having a functional garden space planted with the things one loves to eat while still maintaining the all important curb appeal. Her descriptions of various ornamental edibles that one might not consider growing, hello nasturtiums and orach, are truly useful in planning a garden. I appreciate that she includes a description of color, height, habit, days to maturity, drainage requirements, hardiness zones, and even what to do with the various edibles. That said, I wish she had included light requirements. It is not safe to assume that all plants need the same light, and while on a rare few Mediterranean herbs she says they require a lot of heat and sun, I know that my plant wish list, if drawn from this book, is going to require a substantial amount of light checking while in the planning phase. It just seems silly that with all of the details provided, that this one was omitted.
Still, it's a good book to have on hand when you're planning and drawing a blank outside the go-to garden veggies and looking for something both yummy and pretty.



View all my reviews

Sustaining Growth

Sometimes your garden gets too much sun.
Sometimes you spend months nurturing your flowers, and vegetables, sometimes you spend years nurturing your perennials or succulents only to watch them wither under the unrelenting sun of a long heat wave and extended drought.
I personally have been struggling with keeping my garden well watered, full well knowing that the burning rays of the sun were, at this point, doing more harm than good as the mercury lingers in the triple digits and the rainfall is many inches behind.
Yes, I've let my grass go. I don't care, the heat can have it and when it's over I'll consider planting my yard with useful vegetation. Seriously, why do we spend the majority of our yards on growth we can't even eat?

In any case, I have been particularly worried about my mother's plants. Situated on a south exposure porch of her home, they get about sixteen hours of sun each day, this time of year. Yes, I said sixteen. Every day they've been looking a little more exhausted this week. I was planning to recommend moving them today, but it turns out, my mother is brilliant.

When I arrived on her porch today, bearing one humble zucchini in return for mooching off of her home's vastly more efficient internal cooling system, I saw that she had taken a splash of ingenuity and mixed it with a pinch of resourcefulness and created a perfect little shade for her container plants.

One bungee cord plus one umbrella equals much happier plants.

Could your plants benefit from some bright shade today?

Sent from the TARDIS Intergalactic Temporal Mobile Service