Time to put the garden away for the winter

It’s that time of the year to get your garden ready for winter! There are a few things that we do to make sure that our plants survive our zone 6B climate here in Toronto, which may seem quite mild, but the temperatures hovering around the freezing point are very tough on the garden. This is because the garden is constantly freezing and thawing, and in Toronto we don’t always get a nice insulating blanket of snow to protect the garden. So what is a gardener to do?

Leaves are your friend

In the fall when the leaves are falling off all the trees in the neighborhood, we notice that many people just collect these leaves, and put them out for garbage collection. What many people in the city don’t realize is that these leaves are natures way of protecting plants for the winter. It is best to collect the leaves, and shred them. I just use a simple leaf blower/shredder to do the job. Then I spread a generous amount of the shredded leaves on the garden (3-4 inches). If I run out of leaves, I just go get the neighbors' leaves (on garbage day) – it was nice of them to collect them for me! If you don’t have a shredder, that’s fine – just spread the whole leaves on the garden. You just need to do a bit more cleanup in the spring because the bigger leaves take longer to break down. The nice thing about leaves is that the worms will clean up most of them for you in the spring. So remember, leaves are your gardens friend, so don’t throw them out, use them…

Don’t forget your clay pots

A lot of people have clay pots on their patio, and the winter can be very hard on these clay pots, especially if they are not glazed. What happens is that moisture gets into the clay, and then expands and contracts and you end up with cracked pots, or worst than that, the entire bottom of your clay pot falls out because water collected on the bottom and froze. If you want to protect your investment in clay pots, you need to put them somewhere where they will not get wet. It is actually best to empty the pots, and put them in your shed or garage. What Karen does with her pots (I don’t do pots), is plant a plastic pot, that can then be inserted into the clay pot and easily taken out in the fall. This saves her (and me) a lot of time. We then move all our clay opts into the shed, and safely store them for the winter. We have found that some of the Italian clay pots that are made of a much denser clay than clay pots from places like Mexico can be kept out in the winter - although not sure it's worth the risk. We also keep our plastic and fiberglass pots out for the winter, because they can handle the freezing and thawing.

Mound your Roses

If you have roses, it is best to “mound” them for the winter so that the roots don’t freeze, and so that freezing and thawing don’t affect them. Mounding, just means to put a mound of soil around the base of the rose. This protects the graft from freezing. Typically roses are grafted onto a strong root, so if you planted the rose with the graft exposed, you definitely should mound the rose, if you planted the rose with the graft buried a few inches, then in Toronto you should be fine. Actually in Toronto a lot of winters you can get away without mounding your Roses, or just putting extra leaves around the crown of the plant. You should wait until fairly late in the fall to mound, usually end of November as night time temperatures start falling below zero.