Giving Your Garden a Winter Makeover
- by Nic
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- 06 Feb, 2019
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It’s easy to neglect winter gardening, the cold weather and short days mean the idea of venturing outdoors is definitely not appealing. There are plenty of tasks to do over the winter period, from giving your lawn some TLC to harvesting and caring for hardy winter plants.
We won’t be hibernating at all, we will continue to work on other jobs in the garden.
1. Winter Make-Overs
If you’ve any plans to make alterations or improvements to your garden, don’t leave it till Spring time when you might well be wanting to use the garden or worse, if there’s another dry spell, it could undo all your recent works. So, let us cut back all your over grown shrubs, raise the crowns of your trees to allow more air and light in for you, smaller plants and lawns, whilst the rest of the plants are dormant, and all disturbance is over before the arrival of Spring.
2. Stump Removal
I’m always surprised how often neat and tidy gardens “put up with” old tree stumps dotted around the garden. These awkwardly placed and unsightly tree stumps can still cause plenty of issues. Aside from becoming a rotting hazard, it can become a home for unwanted pests and diseases such as Honey Fungus etc as well as getting in the way of your replanting plans. At the very least they create a trip, digging or mowing hazard. This Winter I’ve invested in my own heavy-duty stump grinder so that we can remove all these for you at a cost that’s rather lower than you’d expect.
3. Fruit Tree Pruning
Did you end up with a surfeit of unwanted mouldy fruit under your fruit trees? If we cut them back hard in January and February, you will have healthier trees and fewer better fruits next Autumn.
4. Pressure Washing
Patios, Garden Furniture and Decking. Let us pressure wash them, making them safer to walk on, more attractive and longer lasting. We can even treat them with a Biocide afterwards which will keep them cleaner as well as making them easier to clean next winter.
5.
Gutter Clearing
Once the last of the leaves have fallen, gutter cleaning can save a lot of damage to your house.
Quotes are free, so if you’d like to discuss any of these services, do let me or a member of the team know.
Mowing the Lawn
If you haven't managed an initial cut yet try and get on to it sooner rather than later as April can be a warmer wet month which will speed growth but makes mowing difficult. Keep the mowing height on the high side until May unless you're raking or scarifying and then you'll need a fairly low cut.
A few early mowing tips:
- 'Squeegee' the lawn in the morning to brush off any overnight dew
- Mow in the afternoon to allow the grass daytime drying time
- Keep the cut on the high side until you get to a more frequent mowing pattern
- Be careful with the turns as the ground can be soft
- Thoroughly clean the mower - wet grass sticks under the mower
Mowers
For the mowing season you need to do two things: keep it clean and keep it sharp so starting off with sharp blades in the spring is best but alas rare! If the grass is damp it can easily build up inside the mower so always give the mower a good brush, scrape or hose down after every use. Secondly, if you do a lot of mowing, then be prepared to sharpen or swap blades mid-year to maintain a clean cut. Order your spare blade now before the shelves empty!
Feeding the Lawn
This is the month to get your spring lawn feed into the lawn. The demands of the winter will have taken their toll and a spring feed is critical for a healthy lawn. Your timing will depend on how things are warming up in your part of the world. If you're doing any other lawn maintenance such as moss control and raking or scarifying, then put your lawn fertiliser in afterwards. Your weed control should be done after fertilising preferably in May or even June.
Weed Control
Don't start applying weed killer to the whole lawn just yet as many more weeds will come through over the next month or so. Plan on treating individual weeds or manually removing any obvious large weeds now. If there are too many, treat the whole lawn at the end of April or into May about two or more weeks after fertilising.
Moss Control
This winter has been fairly wet and dull so a lot of moss about so this is where a lot of your effort should go if your lawn has suffered from heavy moss infestations.
This month is the best month for attacking the moss as the grass will soon be growing well. If you are just applying a ferrous sulphate -based moss killer to control moss growth, then you can get on with it sooner rather than later but after you've done a medium to high cut on the lawn. This means you won't need to mow for a while after application and you'll have uncovered some moss giving better exposure to your treatment.
If on the other hand you're going the whole hog and raking the moss out your plans should include applying an iron-based Moss Killer, over seeding bare patches or even the whole lawn with appropriate grass seed and finally assisting recovery with fertiliser. Scarifying in early May is perfectly acceptable if there is ground moisture available for grass recovery.
Don't forget you don't HAVE to kill the moss before raking it out as applying a ferrous sulphate-based moss killer after raking to kill what remains will be more effective. Treating before AND after is even more effective particularly if moss loves your lawn but you need at least three to four weeks between applications with cool wet conditions.
For those of you with concerns for safety of children and pets that are likely to be on the lawn soon after treating you can now use a chemical free product in your treatment program.
