Reasons Why Your Garden Should Be Hibernating This Fall

October 17, 2018

The part of any home that is the most alive is, of course, the garden. The entire thing is a living organism in so many ways. The grass is constantly growing and can stay alive in some of the most harsh temperatures. The flowers and the plants are just the same, but perform more complex actions such as photosynthesis. They also attract other living things like the birds and the bees. The soil itself is crawling with bugs, insects, and different creatures that provide it with and also eat nutrients. Everything about the garden is moving, alive, and reacts to anything that happens to it. So, during the incoming fall, it might be a good idea to put your own garden to sleep for a while. Animals hibernate during the winter, so they can survive. They conserve energy and reemerge when the temperatures have risen once again and the ice and snow have melted away. Your garden could do this also, because if not properly cared for during the autumn and winter, large parts of it will die anyway. You can maintain a healthy garden or at least, make it ready to be vibrant once again if you protect it during the colder months now.

A little more extra

Plants and flowers are hit the hardest when cold winds arrive. They may be beautiful to look at during the spring and summer, but when autumn comes they begin to wither and die. One way you can keep them alive for longer and maybe even all throughout the fall, is by giving them a little extra food. Mulch is by far the best food you can supply them with during the colder months, as it is very high in nutrients. Mulch is made up of lots of different things which makes it so strong. It can be made up of rotting food such as vegetables, other plants and flowers, rotting wood such as bark, it can even be made up of newspapers, cardboard, wool, and animal manure.

Dig up the top layers of soil. Then pour the mulch close to the plants and flowers. Pack it in tightly and remember to even out the surface. Press it down with your hands to make sure it is as dense as possible. This will mean you will pour layers on top of layers of mulch to get things feeling solid. Remember that this will hopefully last for 4 or 6 months, so be generous with the amounts your use for each plant and flower. Then pour over the surface soil you dug up to protect it from the cold once again.

It has not really stopped

Plants and flowers die during the winter, because of a blockage on the soil. Frost is the enemy, it causes the surface to completely harden and so even if rain does begin to pour down from the heavens, the water cannot permeate below and get to the roots where it needs to be. Therefore, you need to combat the frost each morning.

Get up and one of the first things you need to do is pour water all over the plants and flowers. Then pour water on the soil to melt away the frost and the ice. The water will eventually penetrate deep into the soil and once again give the necessary hydration. You want to fool the plants into thinking that it is still raining. This will allow them to continue on and keep absorbing and drinking the water without slowing down the actions needed to do so. During the winter when it does not rain, plants will go into energy-saving mode, which means they will stop processes of absorbing water and nutrients because that in itself, takes energy. But, when you fool the plants into thinking that there is a plentiful supply of water, they revert back to normal again or at least as best they can. Do not give them water before night as it will freeze and at deeper levels in the soil when this occurs, can be fatal.

Lose the dead and dying

The fall is the best time to clean up your garden. Getting rid of the dead and dying is one of the best things you can do to make sure you improve the chances of survivability. Dying vegetation will pull the surrounding healthy vegetation down with it. You simply need to cut away the stragglers, so they stop taking away vital nutrients from the healthy parts of your garden. Therefore, you need to look around your garden and examine each plant and flower. Cut away the parts that are in the process of losing their color and becoming dry or perhaps brittle. Do not be so easily fooled by healthy looking flowers as their stem and small little spurts might be dying while the petals look fresh. To this effect, you should also pluck any dying petals of a flower also.

Any dead parts of the garden should be removed entirely. Be sure to check that the parts that you have cut off are not diseased. Faded color is one thing, but if you see spots or what looks like to be a changing of color, might be signs of an infection. If this is the case, you may need to dig up the entire plant depending on the extent of the damage. This is so sickness does not spread to the surrounding plants. Do not use the diseased parts as part of your homemade mulch. These need to be put into the garbage full stop. If parts that you have cut off are just withered and not infected, you can use them as part of your own mulch.

Remove the falling fall

Trees in gardens are the stars of the show. They are big, tall, and have a lot life to give. However, when it comes to the fall, they will strip themselves naked of their leaves. The leaves will be blown all over the garden creating a bit of a mess. Hence, there are many people who say raking up the leaves in your garden is a therapeutic task. On the other hand, they are also a hazard to your HVAC unit. Air conditioning units get clogged all the time by fall leaves, especially when it rain and there is a blustery wind that picks up the wet leaves and funnels them into the fan. If this does happen, you may need to call 5 Star Repair Services Inc. that can come at any time of the day and night and repair your HVAC. Thankfully, they have many years of experience underneath their belt and can repair any kind of brand that your house may be using.

To avoid this in the first place, you should collect up all the autumn leaves on the ground in your garden and pile them into bin bags. Just to speed up this process, you should hit the branches of your tree with a broom or long object of some kind. Sometimes there are leaves just hanging on by a thread, so loosening them to the point they fall by force means you will not have to come and collect them all over again in the future.

Many things that a garden normally does, continue on during the autumn and winter. They do slow down which can make us think they have stopped. However, plants just need to be fed a constant supply of water each day to continue living in the fall. They will lose their color maybe, but they will not die if you have surrounded them with fresh mulch to eat and cut away the dying vegetation that drags them down.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

Andi Perullo de Ledesma

I am Andi Perullo de Ledesma, a Chinese Medicine Doctor and Travel Photojournalist in Charlotte, NC. I am also wife to Lucas and mother to Joaquín. Follow us as we explore life and the world one beautiful adventure at a time.

More Posts - Website - Twitter - Facebook

2 thoughts on “Reasons Why Your Garden Should Be Hibernating This Fall

  1. Pingback: Protecting The Kids From Your New Fireplace | My Beautiful Adventures

  2. Pingback: Last Minute Garden Maintenance Before Winter Comes In | My Beautiful Adventures

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *