With autumn in full swing and temperatures starting to drop, it’s time to prepare your garden for winter, and ensure a beautiful blooming spring. While it’s easy to hibernate indoors and let mother nature takes its course, if you want to make your gardening life easier come spring, a few simple chores now will save you much time and effort in the long run. Bittern Garden Supplies is the Mornington Peninsula’s local garden centre with everything you need to keep you garden in top shape from eucalyptus mulch and organic compost to soil, sand and screenings. Here’s our guide to a few things you should do to prepare your garden for winter.
Clean Up Rotting Plants
Besides looking unsightly, old plants can harbor disease, pests, and funguses. Removing old and rotting plants from the soil surface or burying them in garden trenches (as long as they are disease-free) will help prevent pests from getting a head start come spring. Burying old plants in your garden also adds organic matter to your soil, improving the overall soil health.
Rejuvenate Your Lawn
To prepare for the cooler months there are a couple of things to consider when it comes to your lawn. Aerating helps to improve drainage and ensure winter rains can penetrate to the roots. You should also give your lawn a good feed and re-seed where needed, so that it can establish itself before next spring. Keep your grass fairly short during the cooler months so it won’t be damaged by frost. It’s a good idea to leave the clippings on your lawn since they will decompose and add even more nutrients to the soil.
Start Preparing Your Soil for Spring
Autumn is a great time to dig in soil additives like manure, compost, bone meal and rock phosphate. Adding nutrients at this time of year means the additions have time to start breaking down, enriching your soil, and becoming biologically active. Once added, cover the beds with sheet plastic or mulch to prevent the winter rains from washing the nutrients below the active root zone.
Mulch Everything
Mulching in autumn has many of the same benefits as summer mulching include reducing water loss, protecting the soil from erosion, and inhibiting weed growth. However, autumn mulching has other benefits as well:
- It helps regulate soil temperatures, easing the transition into winter.
- When applied around root vegetables left in the garden for your autumn and winter harvest, it can provide a buffer against hard frosts and as the mulch breaks down, it incorporates fresh organic material into your soil.
- The use of specific types of mulch, including eucalyptus mulch, can help ward off pests.
- It prevents soil run-off and erosion. The mulch breaks the fall of water, which in turn lessens the impact of the water when it falls on the ground.
- It improves the look of the garden. Mulching gives a finished and clean look by filling in empty spaces left by the removal of old plants from the previous seasons.
- Mulch ensures a lower maintenance garden for winter and it doesn’t compete with other plants in your garden.
Cover Young Trees and Plants
The extreme cold and wind can damage young trees and other plants in your garden. To prevent damage from frost and wind, be sure to cover them towards the end of autumn in preparation for the winter months. You can use materials such as straw, bracken and hessian, held in place by a wire netting structure.
When autumn rolls around you might be ready for a gardening break, or if you love gardening you might be ready to revamp your garden for the autumn growing season. Either way, there’s many gardening chores you should do in autumn before hanging up your tools for the winter. For the quality garden supplies at affordable prices, get in touch with the team at Bittern Garden Supplies today. We have everything you need for your autumn gardening tasks. Visit us today or contact us on 5983 9779.
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