How To Protect Flower Beds From Winter Frost

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

It is very beneficial to decorate your gardens with flower beds and whole flower beds with perennials. Such decorative flowers will delight owners of personal plots with their bright appearance from year to year. But with the arrival of cold weather, you need to take care of the safety of these plantings. Especially when they stay in the open field for the winter

Is it important to cover perennials?

Inexperienced growers sometimes wonder why shelter during the cold period of planting with perennial plants? Indeed, in the wild, no one does this, but flowers in forests and meadows continue to grow and multiply. However, we must not forget that varietal specimens are usually used to decorate a decorative flower bed. And often in the process of selection, they partly lose their ability to resist the whims of nature.

In addition, with the careful care of a flower garden, the florist's reward is an abundance of large and lush flowers, which cannot be found even on the most picturesque forest edge. Therefore, whatever one may say, but if you want to have an enviable beauty of a flower bed, in the fall, perennials also need to be given attention.

Materials for covering flower beds

First of all, care should be taken to cover the beds with a layer of straw or other heat-insulating material. This can be fallen leaves, peat, moss, spruce branches collected in a coniferous forest, and even a layer of pine needles. All of these products combine two important properties - they are lightweight and breathable. But you also need to ensure that the natural material does not bring infectious disease pathogens onto the planting. Therefore, plant residues with signs of fungus or other lesions are not used for shelter.

Such shelters are important not so much for protection from frost as in order to protect plants overwintering in open ground from sudden temperature fluctuations that often occur closer to the end of winter. Also, such a blanket in the flower bed will help the bulbs and rhizomes to avoid drying out by the wind and damage from sunburn.

Shelter procedure

First of all, you should take care of the shelter of those parts of the flower garden, where fresh plantings of perennials were carried out in September-October. These plants are quite vulnerable, since, unlike their older counterparts, they have not yet managed to develop a sufficiently strong root system.

After them, flower beds with bulbs are hidden under the insulation. It is also recommended to cover the plantings of low-growing and ground cover decorative deciduous perennials. Iberis, subulate phlox, rezuha are hidden under a layer of covering material. Biennials such as pansies, carnations, daisies need protection. By the way, among other works, it is not too late to start planting lilies of the valley on the site.

Sanitary and hygienic work in the flower garden

Before proceeding with the shelter of flower beds and flower beds, it is necessary to carry out sanitary and hygienic work on the site. Ugly dead aerial parts of plants are cut off, dry stems and peduncles are removed, leaves are plucked from lignified branches.

You cannot leave testes on the plants - they will only clog the flower bed. The exception is those flowers that remain decoratively attractive and in the form of dead wood. For example, an autumn garden can still be decorated with dry Achilles umbrellas. Also, those perennials that belong to the evergreen group and frost-resistant herbaceous plants that leave in winter with a green leaf are left untouched.

Other plant residues are removed from the site. Since flowers often fall prey to pest attacks and diseases, it is best not to leave them for use in compost. Parasite eggs can be laid in them, rust spores can hibernate.