Winter Garden Jobs

If you want to make sure that your garden is looking tip top in the spring, a little effort is needed while it’s cold to keep things under control. They might not be growing very much, but what is growing, needs looking after.

Make sure that your shrubs, deciduous trees and fruit trees are properly pruned back over the winter. You should start off by removing any dead or diseased branches, and then you can carry out a little damage limitation for the winter cutting back any sections of the tree or shrub which seem to be rubbing against each other. Lastly, if you have any very long branches on any of your garden trees, cut them back by one third of their length.

Keep an eye out for any early vegetables that can be dug out; you don’t want them to go to waste. Also, give the soil in your vegetable patches a good digging over now, before it has the chance to freeze solid. Getting this task out of the way before the real cold sets in helps to expose any soil pests to hungry birds, and stops marauding weeds from taking hold. Dig over a small area of soil at a time with a small spade for the best effect.

Keep your lawn looking good all winter long by keeping the fallen leaves off it as much as possible. Sweep them up as often as you can over the winter, you can use them as mulch on flower beds so they don’t have to go to waste. Try to avoid doing your leaf tidying after a particularly heavy frost though – you should avoid walking on turf but when it’s frozen as it can damage it.

Indoor plants don’t need so much watering now it’s not very warm, so just keep an eye on them and make sure they don’t dry out indoors. Winter-flowering like poinsettias, potted azaleas and cyclamen brighten up many an indoor space but they do need some TLC; with most indoor plants the rule is that you should only water them when the compost has almost dried out. When you do water them, do it until the liquid runs from the bottom of the pot, then let any surplus drain away. Don’t leave the pots standing in water for long as more plants die from over watering than under watering!