Is Your Garden Ready for Winter?

You know that fall means raking leaves, picking up branches and doing general clean-up before the snow arrives. But are you taking care to make sure that your garden beds are prepped to thrive when the snow disappears in the spring?

There are a few tasks you should do in the fall to help your garden area stay as healthy as possible over the winter, including properly disposing of plants, amending the soil and adding mulch.

What to Do With Dead Plants?

You don’t have to remove every dead plant from your garden! If you prefer the look of removing them all, it won’t hurt anything to do so. However, if you’d like to save yourself some time and help add nutrients back into the soil over the winter, go right ahead and let dead plants stay where they are. You can cut them down or rip them out and lay them down in the dirt, or just let them die down naturally in the cold and snow.

However – you absolutely should remove any diseased plants. Don’t even put diseased plants in your compost as the disease or fungus can then be transferred back into your soil next year when you use the compost. Instead, put diseased plants in the trash or dispose of them on the edge of your property, far away from your gardens.

This article provides a good overview of what different plant diseases look like.

Soil & Mulch

You probably added compost or other soil amendments to your garden in the spring, but have you done so yet this fall? The fall is a great time to give your garden soil the boost it needs for spring success. When you amend your soil in the fall, the nutrients have months to get absorbed into the soil, providing an enriched environment for your plants as soon as they are put in the ground in the spring.

Till the manure, compost or other amendments into the soil, then add mulch or shredded leaves on top to help keep it in place during winter storms. Shredding the leaves you raked up and using them for mulch is a cost-effective and environmentally-friendly way to both add nutrients back into your soil and get rid of your leaves. You can easily shred leaves by running over a pile of them with a lawn mower.

Mulching around plants in the fall can also help with weed suppression and prevent erosion. Take some time to mulch now, and you’ll save yourself some work in the spring.

Want Professional Landscaping Help?

If you’d like help with your fall clean-up, AC Yard Services is here to help. Give us a call at (207) 712-5554 to talk with our team.