Have you winterized around your yard yet?
Pierre Fontaine of Oakridge Garden Centre shares what you should do to prepare your yard for winter, starting with the garden.
"Get your garden prepped for next year by adding some peat moss for some drain ability, moisture retention, and also making your garden a little bit more light and airy," says Fontaine. "Adding some sheep manure at the same time so that it's not so strong once you plant your seedlings in the springtime."
Fontaine shares that flower beds are pretty simple to winterize.
"Just taking out all of the dead vegetation that's in there and giving it a good tilling and you might have to till it again in the springtime, but that would be all that you would really need to do. Typically, when you plant in the springtime you might add some bone meal to add for help with rooting."
As for perennials, Fontaine says it’s a good idea to chop them back once they’ve rotted back to the ground to avoid any mould spores from developing in your garden.
"To add to that, there's some of your perennials that might be a little bit more tender. And for those perennials that are a little bit more tender like a zone 4 or zone 5 perennial, you might want to cover them with some leaves, some flax straw, maybe even some peat moss, just to add a layer of winter protection, like insulation for your plant."
Fontaine suggests that it's best to leave shrubs untouched, but depending on the type, some may benefit from pruning in the fall, while others should be pruned in the spring. He also notes that it is poor practice to wrap cedars.
"Burlap actually wicks moisture away from your foliage in the wintertime. So, anything touching your cedars is actually not a good idea."
He adds, "You'd rather have your evergreens nice and wet going into the winter on those first couple of years you might want to shelter them from the sun in the wintertime, but other than that, just a good every couple of weeks, heavy soaking on those plants will give the plants plenty of moisture to survive through the winter on their own merit."
He says it is beneficial to collect the leaves around your yard and plants.
"The leaves can have mould spores. Some trees have some pests actually on the leaves, and then once they fall off the tree, those pests will go back into the ground and then reappear on your tree the following year. So, removal of leaves is a good idea in general."
He also suggests mowing your grass shorter than usual for the final cut of the year, so that when you dethatch in the spring, there will be much less material to remove.
Although the time has passed, he shares that some fertilizers can be applied to your lawn up until the end of September and says that will make the plant root system a lot tougher.
With files from Kenton Dyck