Winter may not be the favourite time of year for most gardeners, but with just a little work you can have your plot looking spick and span through the chilly months. I’ve put together the top 10 essential Winter tasks that will also help get your garden ready to make the most of the coming Spring.
1.Weather watch
British winters are often rather schizophrenic – one day sunny and mild, the next everything covered with a foot of snow – so it’s pretty essential to keep an eye on the forecast to know what’s likely to be heading our way.
Hessian bags - essential winter wear for tender plants.
Just like many of us some of the more tender plants prefer to spend their entire winters snuggled under a decent duvet. Exotics like Palms, Bananas and Tree-Ferns definitely some winter-long extra help in all but the mildest regions, but even hardier evergreens, including Bamboos and Rhododendrons, are at risk when temps take a sudden plunge.
Amongst the best of the garden supplies plant protection options are versatile and breathable hessian sacks which can be wrapped and then tied around larger plants, or slipped over your vulnerable babies when hard frosts threaten and then removed again when temps rise. When and if heavy snow does fall don’t let it sit on branches or the foliage of large leafed evergreens, in particular, or the extra weight might lead to nasty damage.
2. Be kind to your compost.
Compost heaps need to keep working through the winter too, and they can only do that if they have enough heat to digest all your garden & kitchen goodies. Straw or hay bales are ideal to use as protecting walls for larger heaps and old carpet can be placed over the top, whilst smaller bins can be partly buried. Remember that your compost also needs air to keep on working away, so don’t smother the whole thing or be tempted to over-fill a bin in winter.
3. Tidy your bed.
Whip out any lingering summer annuals that won’t make it through the cold months and cut back untidy herbaceous plants. Don’t be too brutal though – old stems provide vital winter homes for essential garden beasties like Ladybirds and Lacewings. Leave any seed heads that take your fancy for winter interest – a frosted Sedum seed-head, for example, is a thing of great beauty – and the birds will thank you too.
4. Remove damaged/dead branches from trees and shrubs.
Coral Spot fungus - not for composting.
Winter’s not the time for major pruning, but with the leaves gone dead branches are easier both to spot and to take out. Autumn storms often leave a few hanging and tattered limbs too, so get them down before they tear off into the trunk.
All but the chunkiest can go onto the compost heap, but be careful not to compost anything that has fungal disease like coral spot or leaf spot.
5. Trim evergreen hedges.
So long as temperatures remain the right side of freezing then winter is the ideal time to give the likes of privet, conifer and holly hedges a short back and sides. Holly and Ivy make handy and long lasting seasonal decorations, all the softer stuff can be composted and woody material shredded.
6. Leaf tidy.
Make sure to collect up the last of the fallen leaves from lawns, paths & ponds – ideal for composting or mulching, but watch out for slugs that also like to get cosy in winter leaf piles.
7. Weeding.
As the perennials fade and trees and shrubs drop their leaves have a look out for weeds that went un-noticed earlier in the year, they’ll suddenly be revealed lurking in beds and borders. Again, everything can go straight onto the compost aside from thick rooted perennial weeds, which are best shredded or left to dry out and then composted.
8. Divide snowdrops.
Snowdrops - no winter garden is complete without them.
Snowdrops (closely followed by primroses) are the earliest wildflowers to appear, gererally sometime during January, and there’s no better sight for driving away those winter-garden-blues. The old advice about planting snowdrops when they’re in the green still holds good, but equally now is the time to split up big clumps of bulbs that are getting overcrowded.
Move them when they’re just coming into bud, so long as the ground is unfrozen, replant with some fresh garden compost and they’ll soon romp away.
9. Mulch, Mulch, Mulch.
After all the beds, trees and shrubs are in shape then apply a thick mulch to the soil. Leaves or your own garden compost both makes ideal mulches, and don’t be stingy, we’re talking 3 to 4 inches minimum depth here. Particularly important around newly planted trees and shrubs mulching provides plant protection in the coldest weather and, once those worms get to work, will also add useful bulk to your soil.
10. Put tools to bed.
Hessian Storage Hamper.
Finally, once all those other winter jobs are sorted, it’s well worth heading to the shed to give the garden tools & mower a quick once over to keep them clean and dry and perhaps make use of a few hessian storage hampers to ensure that everything’s where you need it to be come spring time.
Greenhouse windows can accumulate quite a layer of dirt and algae through the year and should be cleaned off too, especially if you are over-wintering plants in there – with the shorter daylight hours they’ll will need as much light as they can get.
Tags: Garden, Garden Supplies, Hessian Sack, Hessian Storage Hamper, Plants, Shed
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