(Chelsea Update would like to thank Jennifer Fairfield for the information in this column. This is Part I of a two-part column. Part II will publish tomorrow.)
November is all about getting ready for winter.
It’s time to do all the things that we’ve been putting off doing in our yards and gardens. If you have finished doing all the planting you wanted to do this year (does that ever happen?), then it’s time to turn your thoughts to cleanup, and doing a few things to in preparation for spring.
Trees – Keep watering your evergreens until the ground freezes. Our average rainfall for September is 3.45” and for October it’s 2.84”. This year, we got only 1.42” in September, and had below average rain for October. Unless we continue to get regular rainfall, our evergreens will still need to be given supplemental watering.
All trees lose moisture through their leaves, but deciduous trees shed their leaves in the winter, so they minimize their moisture loss when the winter winds are blowing. Evergreens, because they hold onto most of their leaves, continue to lose moisture to the winter winds, and can’t get much moisture from frozen ground.
So, giving them a good drink before the ground is frozen will help them get through the winter better.
If you want to protect your evergreens from the wind, don’t create what I call “shrub mummies” by wrapping them entirely in burlap. The weight of the burlap, especially if coated with ice or snow, could cause damage. A barrier built with burlap or other heavy-duty fabric is a much better option.
Now is not the time to prune your trees.
Pruning at this time of year could do more damage than good. The best time to prune most trees and shrubs is in the late winter – February to early March – though there are some exceptions.
Early-blooming trees and shrubs should not be pruned until after they have bloomed in the spring, and you should prune dead or diseased branches on any tree or shrub as soon as you find them, no matter what time of year.
Do add mulch to your trees and shrubs now, if you haven’t already. Making sure they have a layer of about 3 or 4 inches of mulch will help protect the roots from temperature fluctuations throughout the winter.
Lawn and Leaves – I’m probably sounding like a broken record by now, but it’s still not quite time to put away your mower yet – it’s getting close, though. The grass is probably slowing down in growth at this point, so you shouldn’t need to mow very much, but you do want to make sure that it’s only about 2 inches high going into winter.
The other task for the mower at this time of year is in helping you deal with leaves. My lawn is still collecting leaves on a daily basis, and it’s not good to leave them there too long. But I don’t have the time (or back) to rake them all up, so using the mower to chop up the leaves and spread them around the lawn is a much easier way to handle them.
If you blow them all in one direction and then run over them with the mower, you get finely chopped leaf mulch that adds nutrients to the lawn.
(Part II will run tomorrow.)
