How should you care for garden plants in the winter? If you plant within your USDA zone, caring for your plants in the winter is a breeze. One of the first things you should do if you're going to start gardening...
One of the first things you should do if you're going to start gardening is find out what your USDA Zone is. The USDA Zones are based on the theoretical minimum low temperature. It's kind of a worst case scenario map, but planning for the worst case scenario is a good thing. Every plant theoretically has a USDA Zone number attached to it, which tells you how much cold that plant can tolerate. If you only plant stuff that's within your zone, then there's not really a whole lot that you need to do for the winter.
But there is a little maintenance you should do with your garden in winter. Once perennial plants freeze, they turn brown and the top of the plant dies. But the roots stay alive and, of course, it comes back from those roots the next year. But once that top part turns brown, it's a good idea to go ahead and cut that brown part off and get rid of it. If you leave that dead material there, it could rot and it could start to rot the roots and that could be a problem.
Here in Austin, we can theoretically have a pretty good freeze, but most of our winters aren't that hard, so a lot of people will kind of push the boundaries of their zones and use plants that will take 98 percent of our winters, but we could have a pretty cold winter and they would be more likely to get into trouble. In that case, you'd want to mulch things really well. In the spring and summer, mulch functions to retain moisture. In the winter, it functions to retain heat in the soil. Also, don't let leaves pile up in your yard and flower beds.
One thing that I would say, in all climates, is that companies have gotten really big on promoting the idea of "winterizing" your lawn. Most lawn grasses go completely dormant in the winter, so there's really no such thing as winterizing your lawn. It is a very good idea to fertilize your lawn in the late summer/early spring to get a flush of green growth before it goes dormant in the winter. But this idea of winterizing your lawn in November - you're really not doing anything. Well, you're putting fertilizer out there, but you're fertilizing a plant that's going dormant and it's not going to grow anyway!
Winter is really a good time to prepare for the spring. So spend some time inside and look forward to what's coming up!
