Common Winterization Mistakes That Damage Your Garden Beds
Winterizing your garden, or neglecting to, can make or break your garden beds. Gardening expert Melissa Strauss goes over some mistakes to avoid this year as you prep for the colder months.
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Winterizing your garden is an important step in maintaining healthy soil and protecting your plants through the cold months. As the temperature falls, growth slows and gardens face new challenges. Freezing weather, wind, and inconsistent moisture levels can create issues for your plants, even when they’re dormant. This is not the time to be making winterization mistakes with your garden.
Depending on your climate, winterization should encompass slightly different tasks. Warmer climates will require less, while those in cold regions should be extra vigilant. Protecting your plants and their roots from repeated freeze-thaw cycles will ensure a stunning garden that bounces back robustly in the spring.
Taking the time to avoid winterization mistakes safeguards your garden. As we move through the fall, now is the time to get started, if you haven’t already. It’s a great time to assess your space and get it ready for what lies ahead.
Here are some common mistakes gardeners make when winterizing the garden.
Cutting Back Too Early or Too Much
Cutting plants back in the fall is a key, but tricky part of winterization. It’s easy to make mistakes if you’re not sure which plants to tackle and how much to cut back. Some plants prefer the root boost that a good pruning induces. Others provide habitat and protection for wildlife, so it’s best to leave these standing.
Timing is also an important factor. If you cut back too early, you rob the roots of valuable nutrients. Some plants like a light trim, while others can be cut back hard. It’s important to identify which ones fall into each category.
Cutting back as part of winterization serves a few purposes. First, it helps to reduce the carryover of pests and diseases. It encourages plants to focus on root growth, which means a more robust spring growing season. It can help stop the spread of plants that aggressively reseed and keep the garden looking tidy.
It’s also important to hold off on cutting until after the first few frosts. By this time, most plants are dormant and naturally starting to die back. Cutting too soon encourages new growth, which is vulnerable to cold. It also deprives the roots of energy.
Many herbaceous perennials are fine to cut back after the cold has killed off the top growth. Hostas, peonies, bee balm, and lilies are all examples of plants to trim. However, many herbaceous perennials are valuable for wildlife over the winter. If you want a healthy ecosystem, it’s a mistake to remove them.
Leave ornamental grasses alone. The foliage protects their crown from freezing. Coneflowers, sedum, and most native wildflowers don’t need to be cut back. Birds will appreciate the nesting material.
Leave evergreens alone, and anything that blooms on old wood. Some types of hydrangea, magnolias, lilacs, and azaleas, to name a few, produce next year’s buds in the summer and fall. If you prune these now, they won’t flower. It’s best to wait until after they flower.
Skipping Mulch
An important winterization mistake is skipping the use of mulch to insulate and protect plant roots. If your beds look tidy, this step is easy to overlook, but doing so is definitely a mistake. Mulch can have a significant, positive impact on the garden.
Mulch plays a role in both building the soil and protecting your plants. When it comes to your plants, this winterization step is one of the most important. Mulch helps to prevent the soil from freezing and thawing repeatedly. This can cause frost heaving, or pushing plant roots up out of the ground.
Mulch helps retain moisture in the soil and also acts like a warm blanket. It shields the crowns of your plants from extreme cold. Making this winterization mistake can cause root damage, and it also helps suppress weeds in the spring.
In terms of your soil, mulch also serves a couple of functions. For one thing, it helps prevent erosion. Fall and winter weather can wash away topsoil. Mulch will hold it in place. As the mulch decomposes, it feeds beneficial microbes in the soil, improving the overall structure.
Forgetting to Water Before a Freeze
Watering before a freeze may sound counterintuitive. But skipping it is a winterization mistake that you don’t want to make. It’s actually one of the most protective actions you can take for your trees, shrubs, and perennials.
Water conducts heat, but dry soil traps cold air pockets. That cold, dry air can harm your plant’s roots. If you water the ground before a freeze, it absorbs heat during the day and then slowly releases it at night. Doing this can raise the soil temperature by as much as 5 to 10 degrees.
Timing this properly is important. You want to time your watering for one to two days before the anticipated freeze. We are talking about a hard freeze here, not a frost. This is when the temperature drops below 28°F (-2°C). Water while the temperatures are above freezing and the ground isn’t hard.
When you water, water deeply. Not watering deeply is a mistake, as it won’t offer nearly the same protection. You want to give a long, slow soaking, sending water down at least six to eight inches deep. Don’t only water where the stem comes out of the ground. Water all the way to the drip line.
Leaving Trees and Shrubs Unprotected
This winterization mistake is more serious the farther north you garden. In mild to warm climates, most trees and shrubs will survive the winter without added protection. However, it is important to protect young and newly planted trees and shrubs from cold stress.
There are several problems you may encounter with unprotected plants in the winter. One of them is sunscald. Warming during the day followed by freezing at night can cause cracking of the bark. This is most common on young trees and those with thin bark. Wrapping the trunk with tree guards or burlap helps.
Winter desiccation is another reason not to skip this winterization task. Trees lose moisture through their leaves all year, for those that retain their leaves in the winter. This can be a problem. Dry air paired with wind and less rain can expedite the process and dry out your foliage. Creating windbreaks or wrapping your plants will help prevent this.
Small animals and deer get hungry in the winter, and food is scarce in most places. They may decide to munch on your tree’s bark, which won’t do any good. Deer also like to rub their antlers against rough bark, which causes damage. Wrapping your trunks with wire mesh will deter and prevent animals from harming the bark.
Snow and ice can be a problem for shrubs with more delicate branches. The buildup weighs down your branches and can cause snapping and splitting. Bunch your branches together gently and tie them loosely with twine to strengthen them against this type of damage. Leaving them unprotected is a mistake you don’t want to make.
Neglecting Pest and Disease Issues
One more serious winterization mistake many gardeners make is neglecting to deal with pests and diseases. It’s easy to do, because as fall wears on and the foliage drops, you won’t notice the damage. But that doesn’t mean the issues are not still there.
Many garden pests, such as aphids, beetles, and spider mites, hide in the litter around the bottom of your plants. Diseases caused by fungal spores do, too. This applies to both in-ground and raised garden beds.
In the fall, while you can still see the damage, trim away any damaged or diseased growth. This goes for broken branches, any pest damage, and fungal diseases or bacterial diseases. However, just cutting them off isn’t quite enough. This is another common mistake gardeners make when doing winterization tasks.
Make sure that as part of your clean-up, you get rid of debris completely. Poke around in any remaining mulch looking for egg clusters or cocoons. These you can remove by hand. Make sure to dispose of your trimmings in a spot far from your plants. Don’t compost them, as many pathogens and insects can live through the process.
If you find signs of diseases, it’s a good time to treat those, as well. Fungicides are useful for many of the common garden diseases. Dormant oil spray does a good job of smothering insects and fungal spores. Neem oil is a good choice if you’re worried about pollinators.
