WINTER CHECKLIST

Your Winter Garden Checklist

Edited by NICOLE CLAUSING Contributions by KATHLEEN BRENZEL, JOHANNA SILVER, MIKE IRVINE Photograph by CLAIRE TAKACS

All Regions

PLANT

To dispel winter gloom, grow potted, fancy-leafed scented geraniums in a sunny window. They are available in a wide range of flower and leaf colors, sizes, and fragrances.

For abundant indoor bloom, try Christmas cactus (Schlumbergera truncata), whose birdlike flowers come in orange, pink, violet, and white.

Grow containers of mint on a sunny windowsill, using fresh sprigs for cooking, as garnishes, and to make tea. Mint is available in many different flavors— look for apple, chocolate, ginger, and pineapple, as well as peppermint and spearmint.

MAINTAIN

Add liquid fertilizer to winterflowering indoor plants, such as moth orchids and Christmas gift plants, during bloom. Always use half-strength when fertilizing indoor plants.

Record your winter lows. Microclimates can cause certain areas to be cooler or warmer than reported temperatures in those general locations. Track air temperatures throughout the winter to get an idea of what to expect in your garden when chilly weather is forecast.

Remove the foil or plastic around gift poinsettias to ensure good drainage. Let the top inch of soil dry out between waterings, and be sure to water only the soil, not the leaves. Give the plant five to six hours of filtered sunlight per day; keep it at 70° to 80° during the day and 50° to 60° at night. If houseplants stretch and grow leggy and spindly, they need more light. Gradually move them to a sunnier situation, such as an east- or south-facing window.

After the holidays, move your cut Christmas tree to an out-ofthe-way area of your garden to provide shelter for birds. For an added treat, dress it with birdseed ornaments.

Trap fungus gnats that plague household plants by putting a mixing bowl filled with soapy water below a light left on overnight. Dump out the bowl and the bugs in the morning.

Get a jump on spring by getting chainsaws, chipper-shredders, mowers, blowers, tillers, and string trimmers tuned up and blades replaced or sharpened. Look for a shop that does small engine maintenance and repair.

PROTECT

If you’ve worn a trail through your lawn or flower bed, turn it into a real path. Dig out the top 6 inches of soil; fill with 4 inches of crushed rock; water and roll or tamp it firm; then top with 2 inches of crushed quarter-minus gravel.

Reduce the risk of fire by clearing debris from your yard, pruning any tree limbs closer than 15 feet from the roof, and maintaining a buffer of low-growing, irrigated plants around your home.

BOOK WE LOVE

On a windswept bluff overlooking Puget Sound grows one of the most stunning, ambling, lyrical collections of palms, maples, flowers, and shrubs on the West Coast. This is garden designer and botanical philosopher Daniel J. Hinkley’s home and masterpiece, celebrated in Windcliff, equal parts memoir, meditation, and blueprint for creating your own slice of heaven. An inspiration to all gardeners, no matter where they live in the West. Windcliff: A Story of People, Plants, and Gardens $26, timberpress.com

N. California HARVEST

Collect cornhusks, pinecones, rose hips, and seed pods from flowers such as poppies or scabiosa for holiday centerpieces. Group in a shallow bowl or use one for each setting.

To prolong your lettuce season, pick only the outer leaves each time you harvest and keep the center rosette intact. For a larger harvest, snip all the leaves, leaving an inch of stems at the base, and the entire crop will regrow in two to three weeks.

Begin harvesting brussels sprouts from the bottom of the stalk when sprouts are just smaller than a golf ball. Remove any leaves below harvested sprouts to prevent yellowing.

MAINTAIN

After leaves fall, spray peach and nectarine trees with copper sulfate to kill peach-leaf curl, a fungus that reduces fruiting. To smother any overwintering insects, spray roses and fruit trees with horticultural oil. Apply when no rain is due for a week.

Lay 3 inches of bark mulch or pine needles on dirt pathways to keep mud down and prevent tracking it into the house.

PROTECT

When frost is predicted, protect avocado and citrus trees, especially young ones, by wrapping their trunks and covering their canopies with cloth overnight. (Burlap placed over a removable wood frame works well for small trees; it keeps cold cloth from touching leaves.) If a hard frost is predicted, deeply water all trees so they’ll be better able to tolerate the cold temps.

Move houseplants away from windows if their leaves seem to be burning in the strong summer sun. Be sure to keep plants watered in air-conditioning; dry air is hard on them.

Northwest PLANT

For color, plant all kinds of camellias, heaths, hellebores, Mahonia x media ‘Charity,’ and winter-blooming viburnums. For fragrance, try daphne, sweet box (Sarcococca species), wintersweet (Chimonanthus praecox), or witch hazel (Hamamelis).

To multiply evergreens, scrape a bean-size patch of bark off the bottom of a low branch, dust the wound with rooting hormone, and anchor the branch to the soil with a brick. The scraped part will root over winter. Cut it free next fall and replant.

HARVEST

Clip winter greenery for swags and boughs. Make each cut just beyond a side branch (don’t leave stubs), keeping the plant’s finished shape in mind as you snip. Work from the bottom of the plant to the top, and from the inside out.

MAINTAIN

Throw weeds, spent flowers, and vegetable waste into a compost bin at least 3 feet wide and high. Turn and water the pile occasionally, and you’ll have compost by spring.

Apply liquid fertilizer to winterblooming houseplants lightly at flowering time, but wait until spring growth begins to feed other kinds.

Check for standing water in the garden. Where you find it, dig drainage channels or convert the area to a rain garden, filling it with moisture lovers like gunneras, rushes, sedges, and dwarf willows.

PROTECT

When snow falls in mild parts of the Northwest, it is usually wet and heavy. Sweep it off landscape plants and trees (a gentle swipe with a broom works nicely) before they are broken or deformed.

Southwest PLANT

Grow Christmas cactus (Schlumbergera x buckleyi) indoors or on a patio. This long-living flowering houseplant thrives in bright indirect sunlight. Water and feed it weekly with liquid cactus and succulent fertilizer while it’s in bloom.

HARVEST

Pick olives, green or black, depending on preference, and cure using an easy salt brine.

MAINTAIN

Feed succulents that begin to grow after summer dormancy. Give those in containers a halfstrength dose of fertilizer.

Rejuvenate Mediterranean plants such as germander (Teucrium), lavender, rosemary, and santolina by pruning plants to the lowest new growth.

As weather cools, increase the number of days between watering, but maintain the length of each irrigation cycle. Most established landscape plants only need a drink once or twice monthly in winter.

PROTECT

If you get caught on a cold night without enough frost cloth for plants, improvise: Wrap the trunks of young citrus trees with holiday lights to generate warmth and then cover with old cotton sheets to retain warmth. For lower growers, try newspaper or overturned cardboard boxes. Drape the fabric, paper, or cardboard all the way to the ground and secure it around the plant to collect radiant heat from the earth. Smother the eggs of aphids, mites, and scale insects by spraying dormant oil (find online or at your local nursery) on branches and trunks of deciduous fruit trees.

S. California PLANT

From seedlings, grow coolweather veggies, including cabbage, carrots, chard, kohlrabi, and spinach.

Set out bare-root fruit trees. In areas with the mildest winters, choose low-chill varieties. For apples, we like ‘Beverly Hills’ (near the coast), ‘Winter Banana,’ or ‘Winter Pearmain.’ For pears, ‘Monterrey’ or ‘Kieffer’ (an Asian pear hybrid).

Finish planting spring bulbs. Keep them chilled in the refrigerator (bagged and away from apples) until you’re ready to put them in the ground.

HARVEST

Make holiday decorations from the garden: citrus and apples spiked with cloves; rose hip clusters in foliage wreaths; grape and wisteria vines twisted into festive shapes; eucalyptus pods, pinecones, and acorns in magnolia-leaf garlands.

MAINTAIN

Trim overly tall or dense ornamental trees and shrubs. Remove crossing or dead branches, and prune for shape. Never top a tree. Hire a certified arborist if needed.

As deciduous ornamental grasses turn brown, leave them in place to enjoy their structure through winter, or cut them back to 4 to 6 inches. They’ll sprout new growth in spring. To encourage roses to go dormant, stop feeding them and cut back on watering.

PROTECT

If plants get hit by frost, resist the urge to prune away injured tissue. The damaged parts will protect inner growth from additional harm should there be another frost. (Once spring growth appears, you can cut off damaged areas above it.)

PLANT

when temperatures are predicted Patrick’s Day. Plant 1¼ inches per cup and steep for about 10 minutes. Dig the last of root vegetables (including beets, carrots, parsnips, and rutabagas) and store in an unheated garage or basement that stays around 34°. When you harvest, gently brush off clinging soil but don’t wash until ready to use. Pack the roots loosely in layers in a cardboard box surrounded and separated by peat moss or sawdust.

Insulate frost-sensitive plants MAINTAIN with floating row cover, which Empty out spent containers, can raise the temperature inside toss dead annuals and rootthe “tunnel” a few degrees balls into the compost pile, while keeping out birds and and spread any loose potting pests. Use flexible PVC pipe to soil several inches deep over bend arches over edible crops in your vegetable or flower raised beds or in the ground, gardens. (Used potting mixes then drape the arches with row containing coir, composted cover. It’s available at farm and forest products, peat moss, garden stores. perlite, pumice, sphagnum,

Mountains soil amendments.)

Grow a living Christmas tree in a Spray dwarf conifers and pot on your porch, and decorate broad-leafed evergreens it with miniature outdoor lights with an antitranspirant to and waterproof ornaments. Keep guard against dehydration the soil moist, cover with burlap and burn. to drop below freezing, and After soil freezes, prevent transplant the tree to a bed in the root-damaging freeze/thaw garden in early spring. cycles by covering landscape Pot up purple shamrock bulbs hay, straw, pine needles, (Oxalis triangularis papiliona- fallen leaves, or commercial cea ‘Atropurpurea’) in Decem- forest mulch. Water to keep ber for foliage in time for St. mulch from blowing away. deep and 3 inches apart in a PROTECT peat-based mix. Cover beets, carrots, turnips, HARVEST foot of leaves or straw to Clip rose hips from roses not protect them from freezing treated with pesticides to make temperatures, extending tea. Wash thoroughly; use five harvest for a month or more. or vermiculite make great beds with 5 inches of loose and other root crops with a