YORKTON - Thank you to our gardening friends who visited us at our plant sale last week! It was great to see you! Good luck with your new garden additions, if you plant them promptly, they should be settled in before winter arrives!
The 2023 garden season is completed, so let’s review what comes next. It’s clean-up time, and even if the weather is still warm, it’s better to work ahead. One task is to pull out remaining plants. If they are diseased or had pests, be sure to throw them in the garbage, not into the compost pile. Rake up any leaves or stems and dispose of them properly.
It seems funny to do this now but take a quick walk-through of your garden and dig any weeds that are still lurking around. Better to do it now than in the spring!
If the weather is still fine, and if there is still the odd bee or pollinator making the rounds in our gardens, leave a few late-blooming annuals in the garden, just so our winged friends have a chance for some last minute nourishment. We can easily pull out those last plants when the weather changes.
This would be the time to cut down perennials, if you haven’t already. Some gardeners like to leave this task till spring, and that’s okay because it gives many beneficial garden bugs a place to call home for the winter. They need a safe and warm shelter. But if you prefer to do it now, be sure to leave enough material on the plant that could still be a possible shelter for insects.
We always leave standing any sturdy perennials that have seed-heads; these serve not only as beauty in the winter garden, but they also provide a few seed-treats for the birds and their winter diet. Please don’t be hasty in your cleaning and removed them, they are so helpful to the birds on cold days.
It is still too early to wrap any cedars or shrubs. That will come in early November. But it doesn’t hurt to get your supplies ready: burlap, twine, or cardboard. Make a mental list of things that will need wrapping or extra winter protection. We have several perennials that are on the tender side, so we always give them a little extra TLC over winter. For some, a wrapping in burlap. For others, we fill a box loosely with dried leaves, then tip the box gently over the tender perennial, so that the leaves settle around the plant. Our care doesn’t stop there, because we also make an effort to shovel snow over top of these boxes when winter arrives. Snow is a wonderful insulator!
It isn’t a bad ideas to mark your perennials, even the ones that are well established. Go around your garden with bamboo stakes, and even make a small flag with brightly colored packing tape on those stakes if you want to make sure it is really visible. And especially be sure to mark new areas where you have planted bulbs! I confess, this summer I did dig out some tulip bulbs by accident when I was moving things around to make room for some new perennials. It happens! I told them I was sorry, and carefully set them in a new spot very close to their old home. And yes…I marked it well!
This is also a good time to clean your garden tools before storage, and to neatly stack containers. It’s a good feeling, isn’t it, to put the garden to bed for the winter! Visit the hort society at www.yorktonhortca. Thank you to our friends at YTW for their great work. Have a nice week!
