How to Put Your Lawn & Landscape to Bed for the Winter
It’s almost time for Thanksgiving. Before putting the turkey in the oven, ensure your lawn and landscape are put to bed for the winter.
This year, we had an Indian summer when we experienced frost and then a warm-up into the 70s. Now temperatures are plunging again.
Your Bucks or Montgomery County lawn needs its final mow for the year, all leaves need to be mulched or picked up, and your landscapes need a last check-up before winter.
Putting Your Jamison Garden to Bed for the Winter
Whether you have a vegetable garden or many flowerbeds, it’s time to put them to bed. Here are the gardening tasks to finish before winter:
- Continue pulling weeds
- Leave some dead plants for insects and birds
- Don’t cut back your ornamental grasses, so you have color and movement throughout the winter
- Install fall bulbs for spring blossoms Read more: Leaf Removal Options
- Remove leaves from beds or use them as mulch instead
- Freshen up the mulch, so it continues to moderate soil temperatures, hold in moisture, and provide nutrition as it breaks down.
- Cleaning Up Your Jamison Landscape before Winter
Your landscape, including trees and shrubs, need some TLC before winter arrives. Here are landscaping tasks that need to be done:
- Clean up all leaves
- Prune any tree limbs that pose a danger to people and property
- Freshen up the mulch
- Install new trees and shrubs
- Cut back some perennials
- Bring in tender bulbs, such as dahlias and gladioli
- Add hardware cloth around trees and shrubs to prevent rabbits, deer, and other critters from snacking on them during the winter
- Water your evergreens and other woody plants before winter sets in
- Close out the in-ground sprinkler system for the winter
- Older hybrid tea roses and floribunda roses need winter protection around their bases
- If you have a pond, clean it before it freezes, draining 25% to 50% of the water and cleaning up leaves.
Putting Your Lawn to Bed for the Winter
Assuming you have already aerated and overseeded in early fall, it’s time to finish off the lawn for the year.
Make sure that you give your lawn a final cut before winter. You don’t want your grass to grow long and get buried under snow. Those conditions cause snow mold to develop.
You also don’t want to scalp your lawn because it causes stress within the turfgrass. Instead, you want to mow to 1” to 2” inches. Short grass won’t bend over in heavy snow, but there’s still length to take in photosynthesis during the winter.
Learn more: Destructive Commoditization & 7 Reasons Jamison Lawn Care Is Unique
If you don’t have a regular lawn fertilizer program throughout the year, consider having winter fertilizer put down. It’s the only lawn fertilization your turf needs for the year.
Winter fertilizer contains extra potassium that hardens off turf cells to prevent bursting during winter’s freeze/thaw cycles. Winter fertilizer also has other nutrients that encourage turf roots to go deep into the soil for extra moisture during the dry winter.
You have a few more weeks of lawn care and landscaping before the winter holidays set in. If you prefer to have us at Jamison Lawn Care take care of your lawn care and landscaping before Thanksgiving, call us at 267-621-4747 or fill out our contact form.
Plant of the Month: Burning Bush
Have you seen a striking cherry-red shrub with copper-red berries? If you have this specimen in your yard, you’re lucky. It’s a burning bush, although not mentioned in the Bible.
Instead, a burning bush shrub, Euonymus alatus, shows off its scarlet leaves and just as colorful berries. Burning bush also goes by the name winged spindle tree.
What Is a Burning Bush Shrub?
A burning bush is a shrub that grows 3-20’ tall and 3-12’ wide. It needs full to partial sunlight. Burning bush also favors moist, well-drained soil that can be acidic, neutral, or alkaline.
Burning bush has yellow flowers that bloom in the spring. Flowers, berries, and leaves are slightly toxic to humans but lethal to dogs, cats, and horses.
Burning bush is easy to care for, but you must contain its growth by pruning it every fall. At Jamison Lawn Care, we severely prune back your burning bushes, so they don’t get out of control. Plus, burning bushes spring back to fullness every year.
While it’s a natural beauty in the landscape, the burning bush is invasive. Many states have banned it from planting in landscapes, including the Midwest and Northeast. Burning bushes have suckers that pop up in your yard and landscapes, which points to their invasiveness.
Birds love the shrub’s berries, but the seeds drop everywhere, causing the shrub to take over woodlands, landscapes, and other people’s yards.
There are wide varieties of burning bush in nurseries, and burning bush comes in dwarf, semi-dwarf, and large that grow up to 20’. The dwarf sizes are aggressive, too, and need yearly pruning.
When to Plant a Burning Bush?
Now’s the best time to plant a burning bush in your landscape. It’s getting colder, so the specimen has time to adjust and develop a deep root system before summer begins.
Keep the newly planted shrub well-watered, although you don’t want to overwater it. Stop watering young burning bushes before the ground freezes for the winter. Burning bush roots don’t like sitting in water when there’s a deep freeze.
Burning bushes don’t need any special care when they overwinter. They’re hardy and survive Pennsylvania winters.
Burning bushes make a statement in landscapes but can be invasive. The key to keeping these shrubs under control includes severe pruning by a professional every fall.
If your burning bushes need trimming back before winter, call us at Jamison Lawn Care today at 267-621-4747 or fill out our contact form.
We at Jamison Lawn Care serve homeowners and commercial properties in Buckingham and Warwick Townships, including these Pennsylvania towns: Chalfont, Doylestown, Furlong, Hatboro, Horsham, Jamison, Southampton, Warminster, Warrington, and Warwick.