Winterizing a yard is as important as preparing a car to survive the Arctic season, yet ignoring both chores is common and so are the regrets that follow.
A properly maintained car keeps doing its job in the bitterest temperatures, but one that wasn’t prepared usually fails at the most inopportune time. And while an adequately winterized yard rewards its owner by thriving the following spring and summer, one that got no protection may look wan the following year and droop further with each winter that it’s left to muddle through on its own.
With holiday preparations and all the other indoor excitement at this time of year, outdoor work is far from most homeowners’ minds, but this may be the time of year when your yard needs you most.
“One problem is, you can never tell going in what kind of winter we’re going to have,” says Jack Pizzo, vice president and chief horticulturist of the family-owned Pizzo & Associates landscaping company in River Forest. “If we get another one or two like last year’s, that will slowly kill off a lot of plants that aren’t protected.”
Homeowners have two options: Keep your fingers crossed that temperatures won’t plunge as deep as they did last January and February or spend a few hours coddling your yard so it can get a healthy start next spring, no matter how bad the winter was-or wasn’t. Here’s a checklist of winterizing measures for Chicago area gardeners:
– Leave some leaves. Pizzo notes that many shrubs have tender bark that can suffer when scraped with the tines of a rake. To avoid the possibility of sending a shrub into winter with a wound it can’t heal, he suggests that, wherever possible, leaves that have fallen around the base of shrubs be left alone until spring. When they’re in vigorous growth mode next spring, shrubs will be more capable of healing small tears in their bark.
On the other hand, don’t stop raking leaves off the lawn until you get every last one, advises Tony Fulmer, manager of the Chalet nursery in Wilmette. “A lot of people rake leaves early, then whatever blows into the lawn afterward, they leave there,” he notes. “But when whole leaves mat down under the snow, and if there’s not good air circulation under there, you can have fungus in your lawn next spring. As long as leaves continue to drop, get them off the lawn.”
Shredded or partially mulched leaves don’t cause the same problem because their rough and irregular shapes guarantee good air flow, Fulmer adds.
– Water, water everywhere. So far this year, much of the Chicago area is running about 6 inches below average rainfall. The shortage will send plants into winter malnourished unless you supplement their moisture level.
So rather than coil up those hoses now for the season, Fulmer says, keep them on the job as late as possible. “Even big, established trees and shrubs need water every seven days right up until the ground is frozen solid,” he says. Pizzo notes that the more moisture a plant stores now, the better the chances that all its buds will flourish next spring.
– Frozen hose care. Sometimes, when temperatures drop farther or faster than forecast, a garden hose that is still outside becomes an ice snake after the water inside it freezes. To unclog it, hang the hose over a garden rafter or tree branch that is high enough to leave both hose ends pointing downward. As the ice melts, it will slide out of the hose.
– Plug up that drip system. Unlike standard garden hoses, drip irrigation systems-most commonly comprising soaker or “sweating” hoses-can be left outside all winter. Because the hoses are made of rubber instead of plastic, and because they drain completely thanks to their porous nature, they won’t turn into ice tubes in freezing weather. If these hoses are covered by dirt, mulch or any other material, they can stay outside all winter. If they lie on top of the ground, though, they’re better off coiled up and stored indoors, because prolonged exposure to the sun can reduce their life span, Pizzo says. For buried hoses left outside, tape shut the ends where they normally connect to the garden hose, he advises. “You don’t want little rodents thinking they’ve found a nice winter home.”
– Bug off. Bugs that harassed the vegetable garden during the growing season need to be alerted that it isn’t a winter haven either, says B. Rosie Lerner, co-author of “Possum in the Pawpaw Tree: A Seasonal Guide to Midwestern Gardening.” Gardeners who left their plants intact, hoping to squeeze out the last possible tomato or cucumber, should be sure to till the plants under or remove them before winter sets in, she suggests. “Leaving them in the ground all winter will just encourage problem bugs to stick around until next year.”
– Oh, deer. Lovely to look at, deer are becoming increasingly horrible to behold in wooded suburbs, where they can wreak havoc by feasting on tender plants in your yard. Fulmer recommends discouraging Bambi from turning your trees and shrubs into a salad bar by draping the plants with black mesh neting, an inexpensive and nearly invisible cover that was designed initially to keep birds from nibbling away at orchard trees.
– Baby your roses. Usually among the most finicky plants in a garden, roses are especially needy in winter. Rose cones, those ubiquitous Styrofoam or plastic buckets, may look goofy but they give roses a place to hide from drying winds and harsh cold all winter.
Don’t put down rose cones until the second half of November, Fulmer says. “You want roses to get acclimated to cold gradually, so you should wait until the leaves are turning brown and hanging limp,” he says. Before putting a cone on, cut shrub roses to 16 to 20 inches tall and heap 8 to 10 inches of soil over the plant’s crown to insulate it, he says. Lerner suggests further pampering each rose bush by filling its winter cone with dry-never wet-leaves.
Climbing roses, of course, don’t fit under cones. But they generally are hardier than shrub varieties and can be left exposed, Fulmer says. Even so, their crowns should get the same heap of soil, which should be removed at the start of spring.
– Prune away. When plants have shut down for winter, they are at their least susceptible to pruning damage. Shrubs and trees that need a little re-shaping can take it now. However, if the shrub is an early spring bloomer, its flowers form on the previous season’s wood. “Pruning it means losing flowers for the next year,” Fulmer says, “so you have to decide whether that’s worth it.” Among these early bloomers are lilacs, forsythias and viburnums.
– Prevent dryout. The dry winter air that causes our skin to crack has much the same effect on the bark of some trees and shrubs that are not native to the Midwestern climate. Azaleas, boxwoods, hollies and rhododendrons are especially prone to winter drying. An anti-dessicant or anti-tranpirant spray can help these and any other plants that have shown winter burn on their leaves or splits in their bark. (Evidence of “winter burn” most often shows up first on the northwest side of a plant or on plantings in that corner of your yard because of prevailing wind from that direction.)
The sprays can cut water loss from these plants by as much as 80 percent, Fulmer says. They come in aerosol and powdered concentrate forms and should be applied late in November on a day with temperatures in the 40s.
Pizzo urges using the sprays on potted plants that winter outdoors, such as spruces and junipers, and on plants that live in the wind-tunnels created by high-rises.
Most of all, mulch. The experts all agree that if a homeowner does one thing to winterize the yard, it ought to be mulching. A 3- to 4-inch blanket of organic material, from straw to wood chips, is the best friend any plant can have during a Midwestern winter. Applied after the ground freezes, it keeps the surface cold during intermittent thaws that mark the next few months. The result is that the soil won’t “heave,” or shift and split open, in a thaw, which would expose surface roots to drying winds.
Lerner says that mulching is especially important in urban and suburban settings because houses and ancillary structures emit heat and cause more frequent thaws than plants would experience in wide-open spaces.
