Are your shovels sharpened? Your pruners cleaned? Lawn mowers and tillers settled in for a long winter’s nap?
It is that time of year again – at last. Even my gardening enthusiasm leaves me tired at this end of the gardening season.
It is time to tidy up the tools of the trade and put them away. For pruners, shears, nippers and saws, clean them and then spray them with WD-40 to keep the blades from rusting over the winter. Using fine grit sandpaper, sand down wooden handles and rub a light coat of oil suitable for wood handles into the wood. Check the tangs (tongues) on rakes and trowels to make sure they are firmly seated.
Mow the lawn one last time and make it short. The grass will continue to grow on a bit and the less foliage you leave the better the lawn will go through the winter.
Once the last mowing is finished, run the tank out of gas before storing. Check to see that you have run the gas out of your leaf blower, tiller, weed whip and saw. When gas is allowed to sit in an engine, it can form a film that coats the engine parts and makes it difficult to restart next season.
Look over your tools. Do the saws need sharpening? Does the tiller or lawn mower need a tune-up? Schedule these jobs for early in the new year. You will want to be out in the yard and garden when the season warms next spring and not standing in line waiting for your equipment.
Tools with an edge should be sharpened, and tools used to move soil should be cleaned with a stiff, wire brush before they are stored.
Roll up your hoses and empty sprinklers so they do not break from water freezing in them. I leave out one hose for watering during the winter if it is a mild, open winter. It is still best to drain the hose so that you can do the watering early in the day and not wait for the hose to thaw.
If you have containers with plants that you store in your garage or garden shed, be sure you water them before putting them into storage. Lack of moisture is one of the primary reasons plants do not survive the winter under cover. If you wonder about leaving the containers out, the general rule of thumb is that plants in containers need to be hardy two zones colder than what you have. Therefore, if you live in a USDA Zone 5, the plants need to be hardy to a USDA Zone 3 to survive in a container out of doors for the winter.
Perhaps you don’t have room to move all of your containers indoors to carry over the plants but would still like to try keeping them for another year. You can wrap the containers with bubble-wrap. Group the containers together in a protected spot out of the wind and winter sun. Or try burying the planters in the ground to increase the insulation in that way.
If you chop your leaves and put them back into your beds and borders, throw a light dusting of nitrogen on them to start them deteriorating without leaching all of the nitrogen from the soil to begin the process.
Last year I heaped leaves around cardoon plants, which had not blossomed, in an effort to bring them through the winter. Cardoons belong to the same family as artichokes and are a wonderful architectural plant in my borders. I saved one out of three, which rates it worth the effort to me in my USDA Zone 5 garden.
You may have noticed that you are suddenly gardening in one USDA Zone warmer garden than you were just a couple of years ago. The zone maps were updated and the new zones indicate climate creep. It is probably best to take this change of zone with a bit of skepticism.
Prepare your beds for winter. Plants like grasses, autumn sedums, Rudbeckia, globe thistle and daisies should be left standing since they offer a winter interest in the landscape and a food source for birds. Get rid of the final crop of weeds. In the vegetable garden, strip the dead plants and till.
Don’t mulch freshly planted bulbs or new transplants until after the soil freezes. You are protecting the plants from heaving, not freezing.
Don’t prune your shrubs and roses until next spring. You want as much wood and foliage to go into the winter as possible. Winter tends to prune ruthlessly in the Intermountain West. If your roses refuse to quit blooming in the fall when it is time for them to begin hardening off, don’t deadhead them. By leaving blossoms on they tend to set hips which causes a hormonal change that triggers hardening off. Also slow down your watering in September. Late growth can cause rose canes to blacken and die-off by next spring.
