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Preparing
Your Garden For Winter
3 Nov
2003
The
hour has been taken off, mornings and evenings
are dark and the only time in the garden for
most of us is a Saturday morning. The trouble
is there are still jobs to complete before the
worst of the winter weather.
Water features will need to be cleaned out with
all the leaves that have blown in removed from
the pond before they decompose. Decaying water
lily leaves can be pulled off. If the oxygenating
plants haven’t already been thinned do
it now .If they are left unchecked they will
choke the pond. Float a plastic ball in the
water to reduce the risk of the surface freezing
solid. As the ice expands it may damage the
liner.
Dig over the vegetable garden and leave the
soil rough. A few hard frosts
will kill off a lot of soil borne pests and
help break down the ground. Fruit trees and
bushes can be mulched with bark to keep down
the weeds and help retain soil moisture for
growth starting in the spring.
Flower beds can be raked over to remove fallen
leaves and debris. Take care where there are
spring bulbs as their shoots will soon be pushing
through the soil surface. Where they border
the lawn, trim the grass edges to leave them
neat for the winter.
Where necessary hand weed or apply glyphosate
weedkiller before applying a surface mulch of
compost or leaf mould. Cut back wall climbers
such as Virginia creeper and ivy before they
cover windows and escape into the roof space
via the barge board or tiles.
Remove the dead leaves from the Australian cabbage
palm, Cordyline australis before they blow all
over the garden in a winter wind. Pull them
off one at a time starting with the lowest layer.
Bin or burn them as they take forever to decompose
in the compost heap. Empty and clean out the
water butt removing algae and debris. Don’t
worry it will soon be full of rainwater again.
 Clean
the greenhouse glass, inside and outside to
allow maximum light to penetrate. Replace cracked
or broken panes. Wash the inside with a fungicide
to kill disease spores.
That should be enough work for one Saturday!
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