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Still recovering from my trip and starting to winterize the garden

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I’ve had a heck of week or three between being sick before I went to Vegas and getting even sicker while I was there. I’m still not up to par but I’m doing a lot better today than I have in more than a week. I think …

We got home early Monday morning and my husband had been wise enough to have both Monday and Tuesday off work. He tried going out in the garden on Monday afternoon to disassemble the patio furniture and start putting it away but it was cold, gloomy and rained quite a bit that day so he didn’t get very far.

Tuesday was a different story. It was very nice outside and while I was lying on the couch still feeling ill he decided to go outside and finish what he’d started the day before. He also managed to mound some soil around the base of ALL of our many roses in order to give the roots, graft and the first foot or so of above ground growth a bit of winter protection.

Hopefully over the weekend we’ll both get out into the garden.

I’d like to trim some of the roses that have very long branches that I know will die over winter. If I trim them a bit I can more easily protect what’s left with a large pile of leaves and some burlap wrapped around the roses. Then when spring comes all I’ve got to do is take the burlap off and digg out the leaves and if it’s anything like previous years there will be very little winter damage to the rose branches and if I’m really lucky the stems might even still be green.

Most of our roses are fairly hardy, but I have a feeling this is going to be a brutal winter so I want to be sure to protect the plants. We lost a few roses last year because we didn’t do any winter protection. It was a mild winter but we had very little snow so the cold, ice and frost damage might have been even worse than if we had had a good snow cover.

Have you begun to winterize your garden yet? Or do you even think about protecting your plants at all?






I finally caught up with most of my garden chores

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The other day, Monday I believe, Chris and I finally finished all the work in the garden that I’d been putting off for months. Ok well not all of it. I still have a few annuals to plant and some of the roses need pruning, but otherwise the garden is ship shape.

It feels good to have it all done!

We should have put mulch on the garden beds by the end of June. That duty was finished on Monday, along with a nice layer of homemade compost. Our plants should be very happy in this heat now that they have a nice layer of mulch to help hold in moisture around the plants and to keep their roots cool.

We pulled out all our solar lights – some still hadn’t charged yet this year! – and I placed them around the plants where they’d get some sun during the day to charge, but would highlight the plants at night.

Chris also pulled out all our torches. You know just like the ones on survivor. We place a few of those in the garden and add a mix of kerosene and citronella oil to the torches. The combo lights the garden and keeps mosquitoes at bay.

We’re having guests from Chicago this weekend and as long as the weather co-operates I expect that we’ll be out in the garden quite often over the weekend. We’ll probably have a barbecue or two, and if it’s nice spend the evening sitting outside at the patio table talking.

I’m so happy that the garden is done. Now I can finally sit back and enjoy it – this weekend.

Keep slugs at bay

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Here’s my Tip of The Day:

If you live in a zone 5 or lower climate do not put mulch on your garden beds until June!

If you put it on too early you’ll have lots of slugs. Instead, take this time to stir up the soil around your plants. This will expose tiny slugs and either kill them off, or expose them to birds and other predators that will eat them.

You’ll have far fewer slugs if you turn the soil around your plants at least once a week until the end of May. Then, to keep moisture in the ground, and to help keep your plants roots cool, do put mulch around your plants anytime from the beginning of June to mid-June. Your garden will be be happy, will be a little more drought tolerant and you’ll likely have less slugs to deal with.

This really works!

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