Good Night and Good Luck


Putting the Garden to Bed for Winter


Iris Watson

Have you ever observed what happens when little children are not put to bed on time? Everyone pays as they become disruptive, cranky and generally make life miserable for those around them.
    Well, the first part of November is the ideal time to put your garden to bed for the winter. What do I mean by “put your garden to bed”? Pretty much just that. Actually, Mother Nature does most of the work for us; we just need to follow her lead. The folly of putting off the task until after the holidays is one you could pay dearly for.
    The short days and long nights of winter give our plants some time to breathe, a nap if you will. Plants with year-round foliage put out very little, if any, new growth this time of year. Deciduous trees and shrubs are totally dormant for the winter months—they fall sound asleep, just like good little kids!
    You may remember what a huge insect problem we had this past spring and summer, due in part to the relatively mild temperatures we had last winter—long and wet, yes, but not very cold. Who knows what Mother Nature is going to throw at us this year? Whatever it is, there are things you can do now to make your gardening easier and your plants happier next spring.
    The first thing to do is housekeeping. Rake up all dead leaves and put them into the green bin or the compost bin. Lots of troublesome pests and diseases—aphid eggs, mites, thrips and spores of fungal diseases—thrive on summer’s discarded foliage.
    Your second task is to prune all dormant trees and shrubs. You should know that when a tree or shrub has dropped half of its foliage, it is dormant enough to prune. Few homeowners have the equipment and skill level required to prune trees, so for the well-being of both you and your trees, I suggest you hire an expert to do large-scale pruning on all tall trees and shrubs—especially Japanese maples and fruit trees. (But for heaven’s sake, do not let anyone into your garden with power hedge trimmers, unless he is trimming a real hedge.) Poor pruning practices can ruin the look and production of trees and shrubs for years to come, so if your mate or gardener belongs to the Lizzie Borden School of Pruning, don’t even think of letting him/her loose in your garden.
    Thinning out evergreen shrubs and trees may be necessary at this time for several reasons: Thick, dense foliage can be a haven for insects and disease, and opening up the plant with judicious thinning will let air and light flow through. This also makes the plants less vulnerable to damage in heavy winds.
Once you have the garden cleaned up and pruned, one of the most important and most ignored steps is to dormant spray. There are a number of products on the market that are excellent dormant sprays, some are broad spectrum and others are for specific problems. For instance, if your peach or nectarine tree has peach leaf curl, it is critical that you use a spray that addresses that problem. For this particular fungal disease, you want to spray as much as possible during the winter—every three weeks, rain or shine, is best, but it’s most important to spray when you see a touch of color on the tight flower buds. An excellent all-purpose, non-toxic dormant spray is horticultural oil. This is a superior highly paraffinic oil, with emulsifier and spread sticker, which envelopes, wets and smothers over-wintering insect eggs. It is a good thing, indeed.
    Trust me, you will be grateful next spring that you spent some time this fall getting ready for bed. Good night and good luck.