Here are a few landscaping tips to help you prepare your flowers, trees, and yard for the pending frost.
Cut the Lawn
The grass will continue to grow until it's too cold to grow. It's important to keep your grass cut to about three inches of length, even during the winter. So even when there's a chill in the air, it's important to mow your lawn during your fall landscaping routine. You want to ensure the grass is cut enough that the blades don't get packed down with the snow, causing snow mold.
Remove Dead and Dying Plants
The fall is not the time to prune things, however, it is the time to get rid of dead and dying plants to prepare garden beds for winter. Get rid of dead annuals, deadhead spent blooms, prune dead and dying branches from shrubs and trees, etc. Another fall landscaping chore is to cut back your roses after the first frost to about a third of their height.
Start Planting Trees
One of the best landscaping tips we can give you is to start planting your trees now. Early fall, until the ground freezes, is the ideal time to plant trees and shrubs. The cooler weather puts less stress on young landscaping plants, so many greenhouses (including us) will have sales on trees.
Water Your Landscape
It is crucial during the fall that you are watering your trees, shrubs and evergreens in September and October in order to reduce the chance of dehydration in the winter. The amount of water you give them depends on how wet your recent weather has been. If you've had a really rainy fall, then watering isn't necessary, but if you've had less than four inches of rain in the month, then you should water for at least one or two hour long watering sessions once a week for up to three weeks. We tend to be on the dry side so fall watering is usually necessary, and this fall is no exception. If moisture or snow cover is minimal during the winter, such as in December, January and February, it is advised to do watering on warm days. It's even more important on landscape plants planted in the most recent season as they don't have as an established root system.
Clean Up
One of the biggest landscaping tips for the fall is to make sure everything is ready for winter and pack up your stuff. Put away all your tools and most importantly unhook your hoses from the house and blow out all irrigation lines. By removing hoses you're preventing water in them from freezing and expanding. If irrigation lines are not blown out, lines, heads, and valves could all crack during the winter.