How NOT to put your Garden to Bed
September 22nd, 2008
Filed in Garden Maintenance
Tags: fall, fungus, garden planning, leaf mold, pruning, season, technique
At the end of September, it is time to think about putting your garden to bed. Your location will determine exactly when you need to complete certain tasks. There are, however, some definite NOs when putting your garden to bed for the winter, if you want to make sure that everything comes back nice and lush next spring.
What NOT to Do
1) Cut back your perennials too early. If you live where temperatures plunge below freezing in early October (Sorry North Dakota!) you might be safe cutting back most of your garden in the fall. If you live where it practically never frosts (Ahh, the beauty of the southern US), it is better to wait until you can tell the plant is starting to re-sprout in the spring.
Why avoid leveling your entire garden in October? For starters, part of the fun of a garden is winter interest! If you are a shrewd garden designer, you can design a garden that still derives beauty from perennials, ornamental grasses and evergreens during the winter. If you get a lot of snow, this plan could backfire. If you do not get a lot of snow, strategically planning your garden for winter interest helps you get more bang for your buck, and more enjoyment from your work.
The second, more important reason is that if it is too warm, they will re-sprout and use up all of that hard-fought, frugally stored energy from photosynthesizing all summer, and might not be able to make it through the winter. This physiological gardening tip relates to what not to do number two.
2) Prune anything after September. Some people swear by a cut off for cutting off plants in August. Again, pruning stimulates growth. If you prune plants in the late summer or early fall, they will use their energy reserves to produce tender growth that will be killed by frosts.
3) Mulch heavily in humid, boggy areas. Mulch is your friend. You do need to be careful that if you have planted bulbs or perennials in a particularly moist area you do not mulch too heavily. If you do that, you could encourage rot in your precious plants by prohibiting moisture evaporation from the soil.
4) Dig up annuals in areas that are prone to flooding or erosion. I have a tidiness impulse that leads me to want to ignore every piece of advice I am writing in this post. I like to have a clean and orderly garden at all times. That means it is very difficult for me to leave my dead summer annual flowers in the ground all winter long. I need to, though, because my garden is prone to erosion during heavy rains, which we get a lot of in Wilmington, North Carolina. Leaving as many of your annual plants as possible in the ground will help your garden hold on to precious soil during the winter of rain, snow, melting and rivers running through your yard.
5) In your zeal to follow directions, you leave diseased plants. Despite the fact that I have told you to not cut back or dig up a lot of your plants, you definitely want to remove any diseased plants, flowers or foliage from your garden or yard. Most plant diseases are tough little organisms. If you don’t remove diseased tissue, the disease will definitely persist during the winter and come back to haunt you next spring. Wash any tools, clothing or gloves you use to remove the diseased plant, preferably with bleach, as the spores, mold or other diseased tissue may otherwise remain and survive.
Hopefully, I have debunked some gardening myths for you so that your fall gardening can get off to a proper start!
Next time, I will write about what you SHOULD do to put your garden to bed.
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