Map your Garden.  Before you forget where you put new plants this year, map your garden. Do it by sections if your garden is large.  Make it easy on yourself by giving parts of the garden names: ‘right of the front door’, or ‘near the Cornus florida’ to designate spaces.  Next spring, your map will make it easier to figure out which returning perennial is which.  And also do a sketch of your vegetable garden so that next spring you don’t put the tomatoes or peppers, lettuce or beets exactly where they were this year.  Rotating planting areas helps to prevent a build-up of disease in the soil.

Clean-up.  Our late-October nor’easter left a lot of extra clean-up for many of us.  While a maple tree across the power lines is hard to miss, lesser damage can have long-term consequences.  Carefully check trees and shrubs for branches broken by the wind or falling debris.  Prune them out now; don’t leave them until spring.  The clean cut you make now will heal faster and you will protect the plant from further damage by winter storms.  Pick up the downed branches and, if you can, have them chipped to use as mulch.

Those leaves are your friends.  The late-October nor’easter accelerated the seasonal leaf drop across all of New England.  Don’t be discouraged and rake the leaves away.  Any leaves not chopped up the first time the lawn is mowed will be taken care of as you continue mowing the lawn until the ground begins to freeze at the end of the month.  Remember the leaves will add nutrients and improve the soil with no cost and very little extra work on your part.  Leaves that fall on driveways and sidewalks can be raked up for use in compost bins, or chipped with a mower and used under shrubs and around perennials for winter protection. Mow short now.  Cool temperatures slow growth so, by Thanksgiving you can usually do your last mowing of the season.  Do it short (1 1/2 to 2 inches).  Leave the clippings and mowed leaves in place.  They will completely break down over winter giving the lawn a booster shot of nutrients in the spring. 

Clean and sharpen your tools.   Most outdoor work is finished for the season so spend some time winterizing your tools.  Tools left in garages or garden sheds over the winter may rust due to high humidity.  Cleaning them thoroughly now and then sharpen (pruners, saws, some shovels and so forth) and lightly oil metal surfaces—they will be ready for work in the spring.

Even the hardiest roses have bloomed their last by early November.  It’s time to trim your roses down to a height of about fifteen inches.  To better protect the bush against winter damage, create a chicken-wire fence about a foot in diameter around your trimmed rose bush and fill it with leaves.

Do Not Cut them Down. We’ve all been trained to cut our perennials to the ground in the fall.  Now, experts confirm that, ecologically speaking, leaving those perennials in place is a better idea.  Birds will eat the seeds on the tops of stalks throughout the winter.  Native bees will winter over in the hollow stems of many flowers.  Some butterfly and other beneficial insects winter over in the leaf debris at the base of the plants or under shrubs.  So, save yourself some time and, unless the perennial is diseased, leave it up for fall and winter.

Keep those fallen leaves in your shrubs!  Yes, for decades we’ve been taught that a tidy landscape required that all those oak and other ‘sturdy’ leaves need to be meticulously pulled out of every shrub and from under every tree.  And, for decades, it turns out we’ve been given bad advice.  Those fallen leaves provide an additional physical layer of organic materials above ground, providing food, shelter, and nesting or bedding materials for beneficial wildlife.  It also gives overwintering protection for a number of insects, which both provides food for bird. The soil around the shrub is also a beneficiary of those leaves.  The compost feeds a vast number of microbes in the soil.

The Not-So-Sweet Vine.  The cold weather means you can enjoy a walk in the woods and fields.  If you come across bittersweet, look at it carefully.  The oriental bittersweet (which is what we usually see) is a highly invasive intruder and should be cut down, bagged and sent to the incinerator.  It covers and kills trees in the forest and around the edges of fields. It is illegal to sell items made of oriental bittersweet.  The decorative wreath on your front door will be eaten by birds and then many bittersweet plants will bedevil your garden and your neighborhood for years to come.   You can tell the difference between the nasty oriental and the friendly native bittersweet by remembering that, on the native plant, the red berries hang in clumps while they are spaced along the vine on the oriental species.

Not All Garden Crops Die with the First Frost.  The vegetable garden may still have lettuce, spinach, leeks, Swiss chard, turnips, carrots or Brussels sprouts growing.  Enjoy the fresh produce into the winter by keeping a cold frame going.  Once you have put the cover over it, you will need to water the vegetables inside for them to continue growing.  And, if you have ever considered garlic in the garden, now is the time to plant it.  The bulbs will sprout roots now and take off as soon as the soil warms next spring. You’ll harvest garlic in June as long as you remember not to plant supermarket garlic which has been treated not to sprout.

There’s nothing more forlorn than spring bulbs that never got planted.  In our part of the country, late October and early November are prime planting times because it allows bulbs to begin growing roots before the ground freezes.  If time has gotten away from you, you can still plant later in the month: the trick is to add a layer of mulch over the planted bulbs.  The mulch will slow the process of the ground freezing, giving bulbs a few precious weeks to establish roots.

If you had a vegetable garden this season, everything ought to be out of it by early November.  Even Brussels sprouts have had a good frost and are ready to pick.  You can save yourself a rototilling next spring by covering your now-bare garden with several inches of mulched leaves from your lawn.  Over the course of the winter, those leaves will break down, adding nutrients to the soil, and making your garden ready to plant next April or May.

Got arborvitae or other evergreens that deer love?  The best deterrent is bird netting placed loosely around the tree or shrub.  You want your evergreens to keep getting light and air to keep them healthy.  Wrapping an evergreen in burlap is exactly the wrong prescription: it cuts off sunlight and smothers the plant, all while providing a comfortable winter home for insects and rodents.

Are you thinking about a ‘living’ Christmas tree this year?  You won’t purchase the tree until December, but you can do yourself (and the tree) a great favor by preparing the hole into which you’ll place it now, rather than trying to dig through frozen soil next January.  Once dug, covert the hole and the soil with a tarp to prevent both from freezing solid.

Time to Cover Up Perennials