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Let’s Get Gardening in November, part 2

Garden Mill sign(Chelsea Update would like to thank Jennifer Fairfield, owner of The Garden Mill, for the information in this column. Part one of this column ran yesterday.)

Trees
Also water your trees and shrubs until the ground freezes. The last two winters were absolutely brutal on them, and making sure they are sufficiently watered going into winter this year can help them continue to recover from those assaults as well as help prevent further injury.

A good layer of mulch will also help your trees and shrubs get through winter.

Protect your evergreen trees and shrubs with a barrier built with burlap or other heavy-duty fabric. The University of Minnesota extension has some additional information on protecting trees and shrubs from winter weather.

Don’t let the warmer than usual temperatures tempt you to do last-minute pruning. Pruning at this time of year could do more damage than good.

Lawn and Leaves
We should pretty much be finished with mowing now, since we did get some pretty hard frosts mid-month last month. But with the warmer than usual weather recently, it is possible there’s still some grass growing. If you are doing any more mowing, be sure to lower the cutting height so that your grass isn’t too tall going into winter.

Mow up your leaves and mulch them into your lawn unless, your leaves were showing signs of disease this summer. If that’s the case, consider disposing of them to minimize the risk of disease returning next year.

Tools
Clean, dry, sharpen, and lubricate your garden tools, including shovels before you put them away so they’ll be ready for all the hard work you expect them to perform in the spring.

When you are done watering your trees, shrubs, and flower beds for the season, empty your hoses, roll them up, and tie them before hanging them up for the winter.

I have found that using a round trash can or rain barrel to wind the hose around makes it much easier to get them rolled up. Connect the ends of each hose to keep spiders and other creatures from using them as nesting places. If you put all of your sprinkler heads and wands all in one place, you’ll have an easier time finding them all in the spring. If you have rain barrels, empty them and put them away when we start getting consistent freezing temps, too.

Birds
One sign that colder temps are truly heading our way eventually is the appearance of Dark-eyed Juncos (often called “Snow Birds”). These birds spend most of the year much farther north, and when the cold starts to set in where they are, they head south. I had a whole bunch of them show up in my yard recently, which made me a little worried that the weather guys were wrong about it being warm the next little bit.

Often southeastern Michigan is as far south as some of them go, so it’s likely these guys will stick around.

Leave your birdbaths out as long as possible to provide your birds with a sources of fresh water. You can help birds get through winter better by putting a de-icer into your birdbath, or buying a heated birdbath to keep the water from freezing when the temperatures do start falling.

If you haven’t been feeding the birds all summer, do start feeding them now. As it gets cold, the main source of food for birds – insects – are no longer available, so they need easy sources of protein to help them get through the cold days and nights.

Happy Gardening.

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