Well, this year’s gardening season is officially over at this point, so this will be my last column until next spring. Before I go, though, I want to offer a few tips for helping your landscape make it through the winter unscathed by freezing temperatures, snow, ice and critters.

Let’s start with those de-icing salts people use to make sidewalks safer. These products are great for cutting down on slipping, but they wreak havoc on plants. Salty injury to deciduous trees and shrubs takes many forms but usually includes things like bud and twig dieback, stunted growth, and leaf scorch. Conifers, like spruces, pines, and firs often have mild to severe needle browning when exposed to salt spray.

To remedy the situation you could, of course, just skip the de-icer. But if you’d like to be nice to your plants without fear of breaking your neck, try taming your de-icer a bit by mixing it with another abrasive material like sand (50 pounds of sand to one pound of salt is a good ratio). You might also try a salt-free, de-icing compound made from calcium magnesium acetate or kitty litter. Rather than just throwing down a lot of de-icer on top of packed snow and ice, try sprinkling enough to loosen the ice and snow and then remove as much as you can with a shovel. Take care not to pile salty snow from driveways and sidewalks around plants and trees. Salt accumulation at the base of plants can force them into an early decline and eventually kill them.

Ice storms are beautiful, but they’re also pretty damaging and dangerous. If you’ve got trees and shrubs covered with ice after a storm, grab your camera and take some cool pictures but don’t try knocking the ice off with a stick or a broom. This usually winds up causing more harm than good. Just wait for the ice to melt on its own. You can always prune your mangled shrubs back into shape when the weather warms up. If tree branches are damaged, though, you may need the help of a professional
arborist.

Snow is a great insulator when it’s on the ground. But it can also be heavy enough to break branches and squash shrubs. Unlike ice, snow can be removed pretty easily without harming your plants. Relieve trees from the weight of heavy snow by gently shaking the branches. You can also use a broom to brush snow off, but try to brush upward rather than down, which will just put more pressure on the branch. If you use a snow plow or snow blower, try not to blow or push snow onto plants because it will be much heavier and denser than snow that has fallen naturally.

If you haven’t done so already, protect the bark of newly planted trees from harsh winter sun by stopping by the hardware store or garden center to pick up one of those white, plastic tree guards. People argue about the virtues of various tree wraps all the time (OK — nerdy people). But the upshot seems to be that the brown paper wraps are no good. What you want are those plastic tubes with the ventilation holes in them. Be sure to buy a guard that is a little bigger than the stem so there is some air movement underneath and remove guards first thing in the spring because you don’t want moisture building up under there and causing disease or attracting nasty insects.

And one last tip: prepare for hungry critters. I may have complained about this in an earlier column but I’ll do it again anyhow just in case I didn’t. In January of this past winter, I looked out our dining room window and thought someone had come in the night and stolen all of our shrubs. Where else could they have gone, I thought (ridiculously)? Upon closer inspection, I saw that they had all been eaten down to the ground. This probably took a few days and I just happened to finally notice. A neighbor told me it was probably the work of bunnies and that my shrubs would probably survive. (She was right).

Before moving to this house the previous summer, I’d never lived anyplace where there were wild hoards of bunnies everywhere so I wasn’t prepared for their attack. Minnesota’s more hospitable winters seem to have led to a burgeoning bunny population and, come January, they’re so hungry they’ll even eat plants with thorns. You can try using some of the various chemical repellents out there (these aren’t poisonous; they just don’t smell or taste good). But, to be honest, they’re pretty expensive and have to be reapplied often to really be
effective.

If you don’t mind taking the time or having to look at it all winter, putting chicken-wire fencing around shrubs and trees is the best protection against rabbits. Use wire that’s 30–36 inches high and hold it in place with stakes. Check your fencing fairly regularly to make sure the snow hasn’t piled up to create a handy platform for them to reach up and feast.

Thanks for reading my column all season. I hope it’s been helpful. See you next spring.

This summer’s storms cost our neighbor a beautiful oak tree that was well over a hundred years old. Now, all they’ve got to remind them of it is a huge rotting stump in their backyard that stinks like vinegar crossed with something sickeningly sweet. They miss the tree and we miss it, too, because once it was gone we realized how our back patio now boasts a majestic view of crisscrossing power lines. I want to plant a tree near our garage to remedy the situation and my husband, Mike, agrees that’s a good idea. As long as we get one that doesn’t have any leaves.

You see, he hates to rake and, though I am not a candidate for any kind of Green Girl moniker, so far I just won’t budge on the leaf blower issue. We can’t buy one. Not even an electric one. And it’s not as if he’s griping unnecessarily. We already have three big oak trees that blanket our yard with so many leaves we both rake until our hands blister and bleed every year. But here’s where my little do-no-harm-to-the-world-by-raking plan goes awry. We bag our leaves and haul them to the curb for pick-up.

Sure, yard waste is composted, not landfilled like garbage. But what happens to it then? (If you know, please shoot me an e-mail and fill me in.) And the bags, well, they’ll be around for the cockroaches to enjoy when we’re all long gone.

Eager to justify, I mean buttress, my argument for a new tree (one with leaves), I’ve looked into things we could do with our leaves that would be more environmentally and garden-friendly. Having already tried putting them into a compost bin and turning them, along with everything else, with a pitchfork, I immediately nixed that idea. Too heavy. Too difficult. Takes too long to break down into usable compost. (Ignore me if this method works for you.)

Leaf shredding seems like the best idea. You can use a regular lawn mower for the job, but it will take more time and patience than if you bought yourself a good mulching mower. (Since this strategy involves buying a gadget at our house, I’d say that tree is a shoe-in.) You can rake leaves into piles and run the mower over them, creating far fewer leaves to bag. You can also shred the leaves right where they are on your lawn. Though it’s true that layers of unraked leaves will smother turf grass, shredded leaves will actually decompose, adding nutrients and organic matter to your grass.

Better still, skip the bags altogether and add the shredded leaves to your compost pile. They’ll be much easier to manage than whole leaves. You can also turn them into the soil in open spaces like your vegetable garden or annual flowerbeds. Over the winter, they’ll compost right into the dirt, which will improve soil structure, enabling it to better hold onto water and nutrients. Or, you can spread your newly shredded leaves directly into your garden and around trees and shrubs just as you would any other kind of mulch. Just remember, if you pile shredded leaves on top of tender perennials, you’ll need to brush those off into the garden once the weather starts to warm up in the spring.

As long as we’re on the subject of winter mulch, it’s always wise to mulch garden beds before winter. Contrary to popular belief, winter mulch isn’t there to keep the soil warm. It’s there to keep it frozen so your perennials won’t be killed by the cycles of freezing and thawing that occur with increasing frequency here in Minnesota, particularly during late fall and March and April. Wait until there have been two or three hard frosts before mulching. Then add wood chips to a depth of 3 to 4 inches wherever your mulch has thinned out during the summer. If you don’t use wood chips in your garden, you can mulch for the winter with marsh hay, which you can buy at lots of local garden centers. Just be aware that it’s a bit of a bear to clean up in April. And beware of straw, which is full of seeds that will sprout everywhere (I know because it happened to me a few years back) come spring.

If you’re looking for mulch that’s easy to remove in the spring, and you’re still on the fence about what to do with all your leaves, you can put those bags of leaves you raked up to good use in your garden. Fill the bags a little bit less than you normally would so they’ll flop down around plants rather than sit on top of them. No, they don’t look so great. But they definitely create that layer of insulation you’re looking for, and they’re much easier to remove come spring, too.

Normally, I feel a little blue when I start seeing long shadows in August and realize summer’s coming to an end. This year, though, I’m kind of relieved. Even though the recent rains have been a big relief from all the heat and drought, it’s been a real scorched-earth summer that has, at least for me, made gardening more of a chore than a joy.

Mostly, I’ve just been trying to keep everything alive, which has pretty much led to a full-fledged case of the gardening blahs. If you’re feeling this way, too, it’s fine if we all skip doing stuff like dividing perennials and putting in new plants this fall. But there are few tasks we should try to buck up and do in the next couple of months.

Keep pulling weeds. Those suckers will be much worse next spring if you let them hang around all winter. Remove spent annuals, vegetables, and any plants that seem diseased from the garden. And, as always, keep watering. If it doesn’t rain, give flowers, shrubs, and trees and inch of water a week right up until it gets so cold you need to put the hose away and shut off your outside spigot. Plants that have been around awhile longer have stronger root systems and can go more than a week without a drink. That’s especially true for many drought-tolerant perennials, including globe thistle (Echinops ritro), blazingstar (Liatris sp.), sea holly (Eryngium spp.), Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia), butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa), black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia fulgida), stonecrop (Sedum spectabile), veronica (Veronica spp.), bee balm (Monarda didyma) and blanket flower (Gaillardia aristata).

Wait! I know what you’re thinking. “Why did she go and use all those Latin names in a column that’s supposed to be for everyday gardeners?” Well, the truth is, I used to think that using Latin names for plants was kind of like being a wine snob or putting “haricot verts” on the menu instead of just calling them what they are, green beans. But I looked into it, and there’s actually a good reason for knowing the Latin names (or botanical names, as they are called) of plants.

As it turns out, the common names we have for plants around here aren’t the same as common names in, say, Indiana, let alone England. We’re going around calling something a “lamb’s ear” while someone 1,600 miles away is looking at the same plant and calling it a “bunny’s tongue” or a “monkey’s butt.” If you use the Latin name, everybody’s on the same page and that’s a great help when you’re doing something like ordering from a catalog or looking for something specific at a garden center. So try, every now and then, to memorize a botanical name or two. Just don’t turn into the super annoying person (we all know someone like this) who uses only Latin names when they know darn well that everyone around them is completely confused about what they’re talking about.

But I digress. Back to fall gardening. Even if you’ve been tending your plants all year, they’re bound to be looking pretty worn out by now. If you’re up for it, there are several things you can do to breathe some life back into your garden for these last few months before the snow flies. Now, for instance, is a good time to plant some fall-bloomers like asters (Aster spp.). New England aster (Aster novae-angliae) and New York aster (Aster novi-belgii) are both great, hardy choices. Sky-blue aster (Aster oolentangiensis), which are native to Minnesota, are beauties, too. There is also the calico aster (Aster lateriflorus), which, interestingly enough, is described on a University of Minnesota Extension native plant list as having “blossoms once used to treat insanity.”

And, of course you’ll find crysanthemums (Chrysanthemum spp.) just about everywhere you look. Beware when buying mums, though. They’re easy to grow, but many that are sold in supermarkets and garden centers aren’t hardy in our Zone 4 climate and won’t survive the winter. If you’re searching for mums you can count on, check out this article on the Extension website for more information on the many reliably hardy mums the U has introduced over the years (http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/horticulture/DG7068.html).

Though some people think they’re strange, I like the way ornamental cabbage and flowering kale look in a fall garden. And they’ll hold their own up right until the first hard frost. Some nurseries and garden centers sell annuals this time of year that will do well in cool weather, such as snapdragons (Antirrhinum majus), pansies (Viola tricolor) and English primroses (Primula vulgaris). These can be plopped in here and there where you feel like you need a bit of color. It’s probably time to say goodbye to those potted petunias, too.