source: Improvenet
Fall Gardening Tips
With the weather changing to cooler temperatures, this might have you thinking about how you can prepare your garden for the future. There is plenty you can be doing right now to help your garden thrive.
“Plants can be fickle and not knowing how to care for them leading into the winter can lead to drying and a severe lack of new growth,” Ronna Moore, CEO of Fairy Homes & Gardens. “Luckily, there are ways to prepare your garden, so you won’t have to deal with a lot of the after-effects of the cooler weather.”
She suggests that overwintering is the best way to prepare for the cold weather, meaning the steps you can take to protect your garden before winter.
“Overwintering is a fancy term that encompasses everything a gardener must do in order to protect their garden before winter,” she said. “It can include covering plants, taking them inside or finding them shelter from the cold under an outdoor covering.”
Here are a few things you can do to overwinter:
Take herbs, such as rosemary and sweet potato vine, inside.
Store bulbs in a cool, dry place over the winter to replant.
Don’t prune flowering bushes, such as hydrangeas, as it can ruin next year’s bloom.
“Keep your plants moist with a second layer of mulch around the drip line,” Moore said. “Water loss is a huge issue in the fall, and mulch will help the soil retain its moisture. Mulch also prevents freezing and thawing that can heave plants out of the ground and cause almost certain death.”
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