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Number one, I’ll do a little pruning. Some of my Butterfly Bushes (Buddlia) are over 6 feet high, and I will knock them down to about 12 to 24 inches. There’s no real advantage to doing so, but pruning them will make them look much better through winter. In spring, I will finish the job and prune the Butterfly Bush down to the ground. If I had roses, I would attack them with a pruner too. Roses look lovely through spring and summer, but they are downright ugly in winter. That’s why I recommend cutting rose canes down to 18 inches in December. Hill them up with topsoil to provide winter protection, and let winter do its thing. In April, remove the hills and do a careful pruning job. By that time you should be able to determine which stems are viable, and which should be pruned away. Cut them all the way down to 6 or 8 inches. Other summer flowering shrubs such as Hydrangea and Rose of Sharon can also be pruned in December. Don’t prune spring flowering shrubs such as Forsythia, Weigela, Snowball or Lilac now, because you will be cutting away spring flower. Prune these in June, after they have done flowering. Another job that can be done now is fertilizing. I finally applied fall fertilizer on the grass last week. The fertilizer will not benefit grass right now, but will give a head start in April. I used a slow release formulation containing high nitrogen. Next on the fertilizer list are my trees. When I fertilized the grass, I found two bags that were too wet and clumpy to go through the rotary applicator. I broke the clumps, tossed it in a plastic pail and intend to manually feed the trees. My trees are still young, so I will broadcast the fertilizer over the root zone. It is safe to use a about a pound per tree. For mature trees, the recommended feeding method is direct application into the soil. Drill several holes 12 to 18 inches deep around the trees’ drip line and pour fertilizer into the holes. Use 2 pounds of fertilizer for every inch diameter trunk. Thus, if a tree measures 12 inches diameter, you can apply 24 pounds of fertilizer. Drill as many holes as possible to distribute the food evenly. Allow the winter’s snow and rain to percolate the fertilizer until the trees use it in spring. Another December garden project will be winter protection of tender plants. I have a few garden Azaleas that were planted this summer and are not fully prepared for winter. For insurance purposes I will wrap them with burlap. Hollies, Rhododendrons, and other tender broadleaved evergreens will also benefit from wrapping. My Japanese Maples, which suffered somewhat from last year’s brutal winter, will receive a blanket of mulch over their root zone. The last thing on my pre winter gardening list is ensuring the soil is wet before freeze-up. Mother Nature is doing a fine job of dumping lots of water on us, so I will happily take that job off my list. |
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