I’m writing this post to record our first frost. Well I think it’s the first. it’s -2 c outside right now and I believe that’s the first time it’s dipped below zero. Brrrrr Well at least all the silly roses in my garden will hopefully get the message that it’s time to shut down and stop blooming. Yes – my roses are still blooming. They always seem to bloom into mid November or so.
I guess it’s time for me to get outside – not now, it’s cold – and clean up the garden and start putting it to bed. I always mound some compost or peat around the roses to protect the roots. I buried the root ball several inches below the soil level when I planted the roses but the mounds that I put around the base of the roses in the fall give them further protection in the winter.
We don’t tend to get a lot of snow here. Yes it does snow and sometimes we get quite a lot but it melts away fairly quickly. The air however stays very cold. The temps can fall to more than -20 c and worse with the wind factored in. If my garden doesn’t have a good snow cover or a cover that I’ve created with my mounds of compost and piles of leaves the plants will be more suceptable to freeze damage.
I’m not looking foward to putting the garden to bed this year. It’s a big job what with us having 60 roses plus all the other plants. We’ll manage to get it done though.