You’ve built your beautiful new home, and it looks wonderful. You’ve taken photos, and shared them on Facebook, and all of your friends and relatives have come around to see how great it looks. You’ve even hosted parties and BBQ’s in the backyard because you love your new home so much.
But then winter comes, and the most time you spend outdoors is running between the front door and the driveway, what happens to that beautiful garden?
Your home inside still looks lovely, but your green thumb has fallen by the wayside due to the below zero temperatures, and mess left behind by the Autumn months.
So how can you utilise the cooler months to keep your garden from looking abandoned, in a way that won’t see you out in the elements for too long?
Here are our top 5 tips!
- Rake leaves and twigs
When Autumn passes, what you can be left with is a huge mess of soggy fallen leaves, twigs and bark, and it can be futile to try and clean up every week, when the leaves just keep falling.
Waiting until the beginning of winter to get out and clean-up is a smart move, and it’s a job the whole family can get involved in, and through quicker.
All of that stuff you pick up will also contribute nicely to your compost or mulch pile, for fertilising come spring.
- Dig up the veggie garden and sow again
As many plants aren’t well equipped to beat the winter frost, winter is an excellent time to dig out your veggies, and the pesky weeds that pop up around them, and prepare the soil for planting in spring.
If you aren’t keen on buying veggies from the shops for a few months, planting things like snow peas, English spinach, broad beans, broccoli and cabbage will keep you munching through the cold months.
- Aerate the lawn
Lawns tend to turn a horrible shade of yellowy-green during winter, because of summer droughts followed by the frost that repeatedly hits them in winter.
Using a garden fork to aerate the lawn, and sprinkling with a fine layer of sand during colder months, and fertilising in spring, will ensure a healthy lawn year round.
- Prune and tidy larger plants
With the leaves falling off many plants during autumn, winter is the perfect time to chop and prune the structure of your larger plants, and get them ready for spring blooming.
- Pot plants
If the dreariness of winter makes you miss the warmer months, you can always scatter potted flowers and succulents around the inside and outside of your home, to brighten the cold months.
As long as you are willing to brave the cold for a little while, a couple of times throughout the season, winter gardening doesn’t have to be hard, and can be a helpful in making spring planting a breeze!