WOW!  Can you believe that the year is almost over? Enjoy your perennial bed in winter by refraining from unnecessary fall cleanup. Leave standing plants on stout stems or seed heads and fruit in winter. Good candidates for winter gardens are ornamental grasses and members of the aster family. The seed heads will also attract winter birds, who will appreciate a tangle of dried plants to perch on or find refuge from the wind. In winter, birds rely on running water, evergreen shelter, and persistent fruits. Feeders provide additional sources of food that you can monitor. Birds also relish holly berries, sumac seedheads, rosehips, and the small blueberries of juniper in winter. This is the most important season for gardeners to offer calorie-rich seed and wire feeders filled with inexpensive suet right from the butcher. To avoid overwintering pests and disease, make sure that you remove peony and iris foliage now. You can wait until early spring to cut back most of the rest of your perennials. You need to get your spring bulbs in now before the ground freezes. Plant daffodils in drifts, on the lawn, or under deciduous trees. Plant other bulbs at the base of perennials or in odd-numbered groups throughout your beds. Another good place to plant spring bulbs is at the base of a bird bath where you can plant annuals over them in the spring.  

When overwintering tender plants, make sure that you don’t put them anywhere where the temperature will get below 40 degrees…water very sparingly, allow the air to circulate, and remove all dead foliage. Wrap in wadded-up newspaper, put in a cardboard box, and put in a cool dry place.

Protect your rosebushes by adding 2–3 inches of mulch around the bushes and wrapping them individually with burlap. Don’t prune or fertilize any woody plants until late winter, at which time, trim any dead or broken canes. Clean all your gardening tools and put a light coat of car wax on them before putting them away for winter. Disconnect your garden hose(s), and drain all the water out of them or the hose will freeze and split. Put them up for winter storage. 

Hope you had a great growing season. Now it’s time to get ready for the holidays…Hope you have lots of Amaryllis, Christmas cactus, Poinsettias, paperwhites, and other houseplants to play with until the Spring catalogs start showing up! Happy Gardening 2023…