Preparing for Winter: Jen's Top Tips for Watering, Cleaning, and Protecting Your Garden

As the seasons change and winter approaches, it's essential to take care of your garden to ensure its health and survival. In this article, we'll follow Jen's expert advice on how to prepare your garden for winter by watering, cleaning, and protecting it.

Watering: The Importance of Mulch and Insulation

Jen starts her tips with watering, explaining the importance of mulch in keeping the roots of plants insulated during cold weather. She suggests using bark mulch or hay to cover areas, but notes that this can be done in either spring or fall, depending on the specific needs of your garden. Mulching helps to retain moisture and protect plants from frost damage.

For high-traffic areas or those prone to wind, insulation is also crucial. Jen recommends using anti-desiccants or burlap to cover plants, but warns against wrapping it too tightly, as this can constrict the plant's natural form. Instead, she suggests tucking the material into place with twine and leaving it loose enough to allow for some airflow.

Protecting Your Garden from Frost and Damage

After cleaning up debris and trimming back plants, Jen moves on to protecting your garden from frost damage. She recommends using anti-desiccants or burlap to cover sensitive areas, but notes that these should be applied before the hard freeze hits.

For evergreen shrubs like juniper, which are particularly susceptible to wind and moisture loss, Jen suggests applying an anti-desiccant coating to protect their delicate leaves. This helps to seal pores and prevent water from being sucked out of the plant, keeping it healthy and thriving throughout the winter months.

Leaves can also be used as a natural mulch to protect the soil and retain moisture. However, they must be shredded before application to avoid forming a "cakey" mat that can suffocate plants. By using leaves in this way, Jen's tip helps gardeners create a sustainable and eco-friendly solution for winter protection.

Conclusion: Get Ready for Spring with These Top Tips

As the winter months approach, it's essential to take care of your garden to ensure its health and survival. By following Jen's expert advice on watering, cleaning, and protecting your garden, you can help your plants thrive even in harsh weather conditions.

Remember to mulch areas in spring or fall, depending on their specific needs, and use anti-desiccants or burlap to cover sensitive areas before the hard freeze hits. For evergreen shrubs like juniper, apply an anti-desiccant coating to protect delicate leaves. Finally, consider using shredded leaves as a natural mulch to retain moisture and protect the soil.

With these top tips, you'll be well on your way to preparing your garden for winter and getting ready for spring. So why wait? Start preparing your garden today and enjoy a healthy and thriving plant collection all year round.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey jen hey kevin look at all of this so come november are you sad that all your work is starting to die off and the color's going away are you happy because you're getting a break i kind of like both but the most important to me is that all the hard work that we did throughout the year spring summer fall you want to also protect it in the winter right so there's a number of things that need to happen and i think there's three top ones for me which is water clean up and then protect all those plants all right let's go through those i'm surprised to hear waters first on the list right i mean i water it when it's hot out and it's middle of summer right okay so statistically october and november are really dry months and then typically it freezes in december right so what you want to do is keep those plants water think of natural rainfall when water soaks into the ground you don't want it too soggy but it is the insurance card that you're going to keep those alive because think of it this way also december to march they don't get one drink so this is the last drink for them before they go to bed so make sure they actually have a drink right especially broadleaf evergreens needled evergreens and new plantings okay so water was the first what was the second on the list clean up clean up so let's talk about the cleanup what are we doing are we pruning the bejesus out of everything well there's all different things right there's perennials and let's start there so perennials this is an echinacea a coneflower all your perennials you want to cut to bed right you want to cut them all the way back to the bed so what i do is take it i'm not going to cut this one because it's still looking pretty good and it's in a pot but i'm going to take it back to two inches tall most perennials you want to cut back to two inches tall right and you'll be okay doing that because they won't look this good right at this point they're sad they're gonna be brown and slimy and then you're just gonna wanna just have it clean and tidy and just so we know the perennials are the ones that come back every year no matter what correct so they have these are the annuals these are the bulbs these are the perennials perennials come back every year annual means you have to put them in annually so this will be all brown and slimy as well this is a mum and you just pull it out of the ground and if you have bulbs i typically like to put them in the place of that hole or you could just fill it with compost so it's ready for the next year in your next round of annuals toss that into your compost pile so it's ready to go next year exactly compost it and and bulbs are big too because these things can only go in the ground certain times of the year what do you got here these are tulips these are tulips and they have to go in the ground in during this time of year because you can't put them in for the spring they have to do their thing in the ground and when you plant them you could even put five seven eight in a hole right then you'll have a big bouquet but the key is they gotta go now they have to go in now otherwise they're not gonna bloom okay uh here's another one it's an ornamental grass right sorry sorry about that so this is a twofold right you could either leave it up all winter because it'll turn that brown beautiful tan it adds winter interest to your gardens birds love it because they they'll take the pieces and make a nest but sometimes you see them planted in parking lots and because they're so durable and then those people want to cut them back so these are perennials these are perennials they're going to get cut back so we can do that now you could do it now but typically what you're supposed to do is cut them back in late winter so that in new england that's february early march so what you just want to get it before the new growth comes out you can see how they cut this one back in the pot to me it still looks a little messy because this is where they cut it back last year so that's last year's growth that's died back yeah but if i cut it back right here a little lower yeah this is not apparent your eye doesn't go to it my eye goes to brown things i want to get rid of them so late december if you don't want the winter interest if i do want the winter interest and all this stays you can get rid of that i do it what then in the spring yes february or early march oh that early any before all the new growth starts to emerge okay so that was water that was clean up and your third was protect protect you want to protect what you've done all season right so we clean that up we cut it back insulation so think of all that water that you put in you want to mulch the areas so you could use bark mulch you could use hay you put mulch down in november i put it down in the spring make everything look beautiful well you don't have to but if you have a brand new plant that you want to protect and then for it to look all tidy during the season that's what you want to put like two to four inches down right it depends on the area what's the protection and what am i protecting everything's fine it's november okay so when the hard freeze hits you are going the roots are still very tender underground right so it acts like if you have it two to four inches above the ground it acts as an insulation layer and it helps moisture retain in the ground okay so mulch goes down and then wait one more thing you could also use the leaves that have fallen off the tree right so but what you want to do is shred them up because if you put that just the leaves themselves they could form a cakey mat so if they're shredded they're going to break down easier okay okay in terms of the sort of evergreens this is juniper correct this is juniper and this is uh this is a ground cover type they're really bulletproof salt tolerant durable you don't really need to do much to this but uh something a little bit more fragile boxwood right yep so good thank you you're playing so this is considered a broad leaf evergreen and these leaves um could get the moisture sucked right out of them if they're in a windy area or if they're planted along a walkway or sidewalk that you salt during the winter it's going to rip that moisture right out right so there's a couple things we could do this stuff right here it's an anti-desiccant and what it does it coats the leaves it's so if you look at the back of these leaves there's pores on it right and so what it does is help seal those pores and so the water does not rip out of it and they can literally just around the entire thing yep gives it a coating we're good to go exactly anti-desiccant and what do you got for this wait before we go to that yes i have twine so a lot of people don't like to put burlap around but some people do if you have a high traffic area that needs protection you have to use that but sometimes with snow people just gently take this around yeah and so when the snow comes all you have to it'll help hold it in place because a lot of these get um splayed out we don't want that we don't want the snow and ice to actually pull these guys down damage the plant snap it off like that right so now my hand is anti-desiccant all right it'll be waterproof so when do you use this and and what's the proper way to use the burlap okay so when you take this what we're going to do is wrap it but you don't want to wrap it too tight that it constricts the plant you want it to help keep its natural form you said high traffic area high traffic area snow areas salt areas and really really windy areas so you're damaging completely so you want to wrap it around right yeah you tuck it in you grab that twine there i'm grabbing this right and of course it would look a little bit different if it was in the ground right so you want a light tie mm-hmm i'm going to give you a knot right here perfect i don't like to look at this either but but if it's going to protect your investment i mean if it's mature and you know it's going to get beat up you're just going to have to bite the bullet and do it how's this loose it's a little loose you could tighten it up a little bit but the other benefit is this burlap the wind can penetrate through uh water could get through but it's not so much that it's going to harm the plant okay so that's great so water yep clean yep protect we're good to go that's right and then you wake up in the spring and it's go time again look at the smile ready for go time thank you jen you're welcome can i anti-desiccant thanks for watching this whole house has got a video for just about every home improvement project so be sure to check out the others and if you like what you see click on the subscribe button make sure that you get our newest videos right in your feed\n"