Tips From The Garden: Prepping For Winter

It's that time of year to get the yard ready for winter. I'm in U.S. Zone 4/5. In between raking all those leaves make sure you tend to your flower beds, too.

I have cut the peonies, spirea, hosta, coneflower (echinacea), black-eyed susan, day lily, columbine, ferns, and iris off at the ground. I have raised the dahlia bulbs and planted the daffodil, tulip, allium, iris, and hyacinth bulbs at the same time. The annuals have all been affected by the frost, so the marigolds, coleus, impatiens (new guinea and regular), dusty miller, and zinnia have been pulled up. I'm sorry to see the color go so I've left the red gerbera daisies in since they are still blooming.

The gladiolas present a bit of a dilemma for me since this was the first year I put them in and they were very odd. They all grew and had flowers, but I never actually saw any colorful blooms...they were all brown and dead...kinda like they bloomed dead in the middle of the night. So I just cut them off. I don't want to spend a whole lot of time on them since I'm not sure they're worth saving. I'll save them for last and if I have any energy left I'll dig the bulbs up and try them again next year.

Note to self: Only purchase the large orange marigolds next year since they were much more prolific than the yellow. And the yellow strawflowers did excellent (and are still blooming) so buy a lot more of them!