Get Your Landscape Ready—Here Comes Winter!

With just a little preparation this month, you can head off a whole lot of springtime landscape headaches. Here’s your to-do list:

LAWNS

While cool-season grasses stay green until the snow flies, warm-season types turn brown at the first touch of frost. The simple solution: Overseed now with annual ryegrass. It’ll take off in a flash, stay green all winter, then fade away just as your warm-season turf is gearing up for spring.

TREES

If wintertime temps in your area routinely plunge below zero, protect young trees from snow and ice damage with this super-simple trick: Just surround each tree with tomato cages, line them with newspaper, and fill ‘em up with leaves or straw. Your trees will be snug as bugs in a rug all winter long!

ROSES

In extremely cold regions, remove the plants from their supports and bend them down to the ground (carefully so as not to break the stems!). Cover the plants with 6 inches of soil, wait until the ground has frozen, and then add enough straw mulch to cover the mound to a depth of about 3 inches.

BERRY BUSHES

Too much growth in late summer leaves your berry bushes vulnerable to damage by Old Man Winter. So what can you do to prevent that from happening? It’s simple; unless you need to get rid of diseased wood, halt all pruning at least a month before you expect the first frost. That way, new canes will have time to harden off before cold weather hits.

VEGETABLE BEDS

Spread a thick layer of newspaper over the tilled garden, add a layer of leaves over that, and top it all off with straw. After a lot of trial and error, I’ve found that this is the worms’ very favorite bedtime blanket. Come spring, your planting beds will be rarin’ to grow!

Deer Me!

In early spring, buck deer love to use trees as scratching posts to scrape the velvet off their new antlers—scraping off the tree bark in the process. This can stunt the tree’s growth or even kill it, depending on the severity of the damage.

After years of frustration and practice, I’ve come up with a lot of tricks for keeping those beautiful, brown-eyed bruisers away from my trees and shrubs. But I have to admit that the only surefire way to keep them out of your yard is to put up a fence. Or, better yet, two fences that are at least 5 feet high and 4 feet apart. The reason: Deer can jump high, and they can jump far, but they can’t do both at the same time. So use that deficiency to your advantage if you can.

But if you don’t have the time, inclination or money to erect a fence, don’t give up hope. Smelly substances like deodorant soap, unwashed socks, and human hair are classic deer deterrents, and for good reason: They work well—that is, as long as you keep the scent from washing away in rain or snow. Here’s how to do exactly that:

STEP 1. Tuck your deterrent of choice into an old panty hose toe or a mesh onion bag, and tie the pouch closed with a string.

STEP 2. Poke a hole in the bottom of a 12-ounce foam or waxed-paper drink cup.

STEP 3. Tuck the pouch into the cup, pull the sting through the hole, and tie it into a loop. Then fasten the loop to a tree or shrub branch, and you’re good to go. Your smell emitters should keep their deer-chasing power for about a year, right through rain, sleet, snow, or dark of night!