I am so tempted to get out in our gardens and “clean up.”
Between raindrops I dash outside with clippers in hand ready to cut back the perennials just to make it more appealing to my eyeballs!
And then I came across a great article by Egan Davis, UBC horticulturist who, I am pretty sure, spoke to me directly.
“Fall clean-up is actually one of the most detrimental things you can do in your garden,” Davis said.
He actually recommends leaving plants alone until next spring. Those tall, finished blooms should be left until the spring when you would then clip them down into little pieces and leave them where they fall.
Roses can be cut back, though, to help them deal with winter winds.
Egan also recommends not leaving soil exposed.
Winds, rain and freezing temperatures can actually damage soil structure.
“Nowhere in nature do you see bare, exposed soil. It’s going to be covered with plant detritus, or rocks or grasses,” said Egan. “Cover your exposed soil areas with mulch and more mulch! When soil freezes, it expands, loosening up fine roots and heaves crowns of plants out of the soil. Mulch works to keep the top layer of soil from freezing.”
This is the time of year to rake up nature’s bounty. Leaves contain more minerals than manure giving us a great way to add free organic matter to our gardens. Tree roots bore through top soil and penetrate deep into subsoil taking up valuable mineral nutrients through their roots and storing them in their leaves. So, all those leaves you continue to rake up day after day through the fall season, if left to decay on the soil, would feed healthy nutrients to your plants throughout the winter.
You can use handfuls of scrunched up leaves placed around plants to cover as much soil as possible. My husband and I are collecting leaves right now and storing them in plastic bags. You can poke holes in the bags to allow worms to get in and add their wonderful worm castings.
You can also make a simple wire or landscape fence cage to store your leaves. It takes longer to make a ‘leaf mould’ — about one year — but it is worth the wait.
It is important not to let mulch pile up under trees and thoroughly weed your gardens before putting down your leaf mulch. The mulch will keep down weeds in your garden until after the frost leaves us in the spring. Get rid of slug and snail infestations at this time also.
So the clippers have gone away, the leaf mulch is cooking and the birds are snacking on the seed heads of the plants I have left standing!
Lynda Pasacreta is the current president of the Richmond Garden Club. For more information visit RichmondGardenClub.ca.
