The 10 best winter garden tasks you can do for your garden and plants
1. Take stock of your climate and act accordingly
In regions with dry summers, you may want to consider building a water tank or at least installing a rainwater butt. Areas with a high water table will need you to think about getting in plants that absorb water and help prevent flooding.
In areas with high precipitation, rain gardens and swales (grass channels for stormwater run-off) deserve to be on your radar. In colder zones, lengthen the growing season with raised beds, which warm up earlier and faster than the ground.
Gardeners on steep terrain can fight erosion using plants with especially efficient soil-binding roots. Sustainably speaking, the ideal is to garden in sync with nature, nudging it gently your way, while minimalising any negative impacts on the environment.
2. Dream long and seek inspiration for spring gardening
Long evenings and cosy days out of the elements provide plenty of time to reflect on your garden; on what worked and what didn’t; on how you’d like it to be – and why it wasn’t.
It may be time to plan a new look or learn a new technique; find out more about the plants you love to grow.
There is time to become inspired by other people’s gardens via books, magazines, TV shows or online videos.
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3. Take care of your soil with fertiliser
Soil can get tired, exhausted even, especially in highly productive areas such as the vegetable patch or ornamental beds. While fertiliser will pep plants up, it’s better to give them rich, healthy soil.
Adding compost can be expensive if you need to buy it. A more economical way to top up and replenish the soil in empty beds is to treat them as individual compost heaps over winter by using the lasagne method.
Layer cardboard, horse, sheep and/or chicken manure, autumn leaves, seaweed, comfrey leaves, wood chips, straw, vegetable scraps, blood and bone and grass clippings directly on the bed. By spring planting time, all should have rotted down into beautiful, friable soil.
If the layers have not completely broken down by then, add a layer of compost and plant into that. The decomposition below will continue into spring.
Around all plants, and in areas where lasagne composting is not practical, a thick layer of pea or other straw mulch will protect tender perennials and enrich the soil. For those who find the look unsightly in ornamental beds, add a top layer of compost or other soil conditioner.
4. Consider adding lime to compacted soil
Some soils need specific help to be more plant-friendly. Heavy clay or compacted soils can be broken up with lime, which is best applied in winter. This improves drainage and soil structure, allowing the growth of healthy roots.
Lime also raises the pH of the soil, reducing its acidity. Too acidic and plants struggle to uptake nutrients.
Some plants love acid, however. For those that do, use gypsum rather than lime as a soil conditioner. Light sandy soils, on the other hand, can be too free-draining, washing away nutrients and moisture. Regular applications of compost and other organic matter are about the only way to combat this.
5. Don’t let your kitchen scraps go to waste
Hold on to your paper bags, toilet rolls, lawn mowings, dead leaves, prunings and weeds. Get them working for you via a worm farm or compost. Start one today and by summer you’ll have the satisfaction of so much rich, crumbly, sweet-smelling humus.
Compost tumblers and worm farms are perfect for smaller gardens. Those in larger gardens could go with the three-bin method, which ensures a constant supply of compost. While one heap is being built, the second is decomposing, and the third being spread around the garden.
6. Cleanliness is next
By ridding the garden of that bedraggled winter look you will also be helping your plants remain healthy. Overwintering pests and diseases love little more than inhabiting piles of fallen leaves, rotten fruit, scraggly dying weeds and other debris at the base of their host plants.
Be they insects, bacterium or fungi, come spring and summer these pests are in a prime position to pop up and reinfect the plants. Fruit trees and roses are particularly susceptible. After clearing, add a layer of compost to feed the plant once it starts growing again.
Green and glasshouses need an annual clean inside and out. A water blaster with a low-pressure attachment will ease the job. Otherwise, it’s warm soapy water, a scrubbing brush, a hose and plenty of elbow grease.
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7. Give your plants their winter trim
Deciduous trees, including pip fruit and soft fruit bushes, are best pruned in winter while dormant.
Remove dead, damaged or diseased branches. Bare of leaves, a tree’s form is made more apparent, enabling reshaping if need be. Some trees and vines, such as acers, birches and grapes, ooze sap if cut when not dormant. This can weaken the plant.
Shrub and climbing rose bushes should be cut back hard in late winter to promote good spring growth and plenty of blooms. Clematis and wisteria also benefit from a good prune now.
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8. Time for seed collection
The repository of so many of our gardening aspirations and failures, seed collections tend only to increase unless a serious winter sort is undertaken.
Before you embark on the joyful late-winter task of ordering new seeds, check the use-by dates of the existing packets and throw out the old ones. Those with hoarder tendencies could try mixing them all and sprinkling them over a small area in spring to see what emerges.
Take an inventory of the remainder to clarify what you really need or want to grow this coming season.
9. Care for your much-loved gardening equipment
Given there’s not much need for tools over the chilly months, it’s a good time to cosset and care and care for them.
Irrigation equipment, from timers to hoses and sprinklers, can be packed away from damaging frosts and other inclement weather. Hand tools may be cleaned of dirt with a damp cloth; wooden handles oiled, joints oiled, and blades sharpened.
The likes of a barrel or pail filled with sand infused with clean engine oil in which the tools are stored when not in use all year round will help preserve all your good work. Lawnmowers and other power tools may warrant a good clean with a brush, their air filters and spark plugs cleaned or changed, oil replaced and so on.
10. Don’t forget your indoor plants
A weaker sun sitting lower in the sky and up for shorter periods may mean some pot plants are due for a winter vacation, probably somewhere else in the house.
Many will like being nearer to a window to mop up more light; some who spend the other three seasons happily basking on the sills may find the nights too cold and will prefer to be further away. Few will like either cold draughts or warm blasts from heat pumps, fires or heaters.
Both dirty windows and dirty leaves can negatively impact plants, inhibiting photosynthesis, so give them both a clean – the leaves with a damp cloth. Indoor plants need less watering in winter – overwatering being a major cause of death in the chillier months. Many go dormant then and don’t need any water at all.
Text: Mary Lovell-Smith
Related articles:
- Kick start your winter gardening with these easy tasks
- Gardening influencer Annabel Sandison shares her best advice
- 10 Gardening gifts for loved ones with a green thumb
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