For starters we planted our winter garden indoors. Our lettuces, tomatoes, and herbs all sprouted in a couple of days due to the nice warm temps in our sun room and fresh seed we purchased earlier this spring. Now that we have the garden growing, we need to turn our attentions over to winterizing our outdoor landscape and farm. Of course, the procedures I am doing will not necessarily effect all of you as I live in zone 4, but hopefully you will find most of this information useful.
The first items that we took care of was our pond garden. The elephant ears, Hardy Water Lily, Calla Lilies, Glads, and Dahlia bulbs all need to be dug up and stored over winter indoors. Elephant ears in particular cannot have any frost, so these were dug up even though the leaves were still green. We cut the leaves off about six inches above the soil line and composted them. Next we dug a hole 12" away from the roots and helped pull up the bulb with the stem we left. You must thoroughly wash all the soil away from the roots and allow the bulbs to dry on newspaper out of direct sunlight for a few days making sure to turn the bulbs every 24 hours. Once dried, we store them in our basement in a cardboard box nestled in a bed of peat moss. We did this last year and were successful as all our bulbs sprouted up this spring and multiplied. So, we have double the plants we started with!
As for the water lily, we have a local television program that gives an excellent tutorial on how to winterize your pond. I cannot improve upon this, so you may watch it here:
Finally, the glads, dahlias, and calla lillies are all treated the same when it comes to winterizing those bulbs. After the first light frost when the leaves begin to turn yellow, I dig up all the bulbs, shake off the loose dirt, cut the foilage off right to the crown of the bulb for composting, and store in cardboard flats in our basement over the winter. They sit out in the open and I check them weekly to make sure they do not shrivel up. If the bulbs do show signs of shriveling up, I just sprinkle a little water over them. Our unfinished basement is actually quite humid in the main room, so we have not had problems with this. It is also a good idea to flip the bulbs over once in a while to make sure that moisture is not building up to cause rot and mold.
As for the rest of our gardens, we allow the foilage of the pernials to die and remain in the garden so they can help insulate the plants' roots over the cold winter. We remove the foilage in the spring to allow the plants to grow. The annuals we pull up and compost on the other hand, unless you want them to stay in the beds and naturally spread seeds for the next year. We did this and had seedlings sprout up all over our garden, so I would not really recommend this if you want a particular plant in a particular spot. However, if you are into natural, native gardens, this would be a great way to save money on seeds.
The vegetable garden also recieves a good cleaning where we pull all of the old plants out of the garden. We compost them and then hoe the entire garden to prevent weeds from overwintering. This gives us a great jump start on our weeding chores the following year. You may also lay down black landscape fabric at this point to help keep the soil from eroding and allow the soil to warm up faster the following spring after the snow melts.
Remember to take in any garden ornaments, planters, pots, and patio furnature. Clean them up and store them indoors for winter storage. Next, we give our lawn a final boost of fertizler, before the hard freeze, to help boost root growth for the coming winter. This will help your lawn be prepared to sprout up early and thick in the spring before the weeds.
Finally, we sit back and relax knowing we are prepared for the first snowflake to fall. Well, the relaxing step may last all of two minutes as everyone knows there is always a lot of work to be done!
Have a happy Autumn everyone!
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