Besides taking care of your grass as Brandon detailed, does anyone else do anything extra to shut down their yard for the winter?
Divide any monkey grass? Fertilize any plants? Get any bushes into the ground?
What's your check list?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
i was trying to get the soil and mulch in shape in my beds. pulled back the old mulch, turned up the soil a bit with a rake and trowel, added black cow and then replace the mulch. Still in process on this, actually. Also adding in the soaker hoses, which is certainly ill timed, but I HAVE to have it for spring, and who knows how much time i will realistically get in the garden then. So putting it in now, winter be damned.
It's getting a little late for dividing, but i think you can still do that as well for a few weeks more. Things just need to be in the ground, and have time to get their roots set before the freeze.
Trimming is a mixed bag, i did a fair amount, but it was more out of necessity after skipping trimming for a year than being well timed. If you trim hedges back to sticks, they'll be sticks till spring, since very little growth will be happening during that time. so be careful there. Roses i would wait till December or early January to chop.
'course bulbs are the thing now, and until the ground gets hard keep throwing them in. not that that is a "shut down" thing, but still.
yeah, I've got some bulbs to toss in this weekend. I think I'm going to fertilize some spring-blooming stuff soon (azaleas, etc), plant some pansies (matt, that was for you), and get ready to deal with leaves for the next, oh, 3 months or so. :-)
oh yeah also and this is the time of year that i install the bags around the trees to catch the leaves.
In a couple of weeks when you put the lawn mower away, is a good time to take the old blade off and have it sharpened. Change the oil and add a gas addative so that the gass doesn't go bad over the winter. Also, a good time to clean up or replace the spark plug.
I already did my pruning. Sometime in january I usually put down some pelletized lime on the yard to help with the PH.
Leaves are the big problem right now. If you are trying to grow grass keeping the areas clear of leaves is a constant battle.
I recently debated with a buddy of mine whether or not it was a good idea to mow the leaves or rake them. Scott's Lawn answered the question for me. While much of their answer is a commercial, the big answer is go ahead and mow/mulch fallen leaves.
I have found that leaves take a while to break down in my compost bin. They are great for the soil but I wonder if the mower gets them ground down enough.
Another thing I am doing is waiting for the leaves on my flowering plants (elephant ears, caladiums, peonies) to turn yellow and I am then cutting them off.
Post a Comment