Pre-winter Care In The Garden

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

Fruit trees and berry bushes, which from early spring to deep autumn worked hard to endow the gardener with a generous harvest, need to be helped to survive the coming frosty season as comfortably and safely as possible. Only with such a caring and respectful approach to your home pets can you count on their long and fruitful life in the garden

Frost protection

Back in October, you had to take care of digging up and fertilizing the soil in your garden. But if this was not done, you need to hurry up with these works in early November. In addition to weed control, this will provide a high-quality mechanical structure of the soil, as well as additional moisture during the thawing of blocks frozen during the winter in spring. Now you can still embed in the soil half of the annual rate of urea. When digging the trunks, you need to be very careful. Zealous cultivation of the earth to a depth with a shovel bayonet can damage the root system, which is especially dangerous before the onset of frost.

Take the time to insulate your plants, especially young pets, with reeds or collected branches of conifers. Newspapers, cardboard, non-woven covering materials are also used. This is a good protection from both sudden temperature fluctuations and sharp teeth of various rodent species.

In the first half of November, protective measures are taken in the vineyard. To do this, you have to work with a shovel. A groove with a depth of about 15 cm is arranged near the vine. The lashes are freed from the supports and placed in a prepared shelter. Then they hide the vine under a layer of soil about 20 cm.

When the grapes are planted near the walls of capital buildings, the vine is first insulated with dry fallen leaves or straw. After that, they are additionally covered with a layer of earth.

Often grapes adorn the carved columns and walls of the pavilions. When such architectural structures are built on summer cottages in regions with a mild climate, it is enough to cover the vine with straw mats or tie the shoots around the columns, covering them with reeds. But in latitudes with harsh winters, such a shelter does not save from frost.

Protect the site from rodents

Plantings can be harmed not only by the approaching frosty weather, but also by rodents fleeing from winter hunger. They damage strong old plantations, and also cause irreparable harm to seedlings dug in trenches. To protect your site from their invasion, you need to caulk all the holes in the fences, plug all the cracks.

There should be no gaps between the fences and the ground, into which hares and other lovers to feast on bark and shoots should squeeze. If a chain-link mesh is stretched as a fence to scare away uninvited small guests, it is recommended to overlay it with prickly material around the perimeter.

Time to take care of the planting material

In November, you can still continue to work on harvesting lignified currant cuttings for reproduction. A suitable material for this would be annual shrub shoots. To do this, cut twigs about 25 cm long with a sharp tool. The top must be cut off - it is not lignified enough, besides, there are weak buds on it. The correct cuttings are done like this:

• the lower one is performed under the kidney, obliquely;

• upper - above the bud, perpendicular to the direction of shoot growth.

This moment is important to accelerate the formation of callus and the formation of roots. In addition, with the arrival of spring, this will help determine where the top of the cutting is and prevent planting errors.

The blanks are tied in bundles and kept in a bucket of wet sand until spring. The most favorable temperature for this will be + 4 … + 5 ° С. So that the root system does not begin to form prematurely, gardeners go for such a trick - they store the cuttings with the lower cut up.