Plan Now for Next Year's Garden!

Greetings. Fall is a time of sadness for me. I dislike seeing my garden go to sleep for the winter. Fall is also a time of excitement for me because I can start planning ahead for next year. Let's consider some easy steps you can take right now to improve your garden for next year.

1. Clean up all trash from this year. Be particular about cleaning up dead annual plants and removing dead stalks from perennials or shrubs. Leaving these in the garden invites disease to set in and provides winter hiding places for insect pests.

2. Did you make the mistake of planting an invasive plant like mint? This is the time to pull up ALL the roots and rhizomes you can find to help eliminate the plant. It will take persistent work for years to rid yourself of invasive plants. Give yourself a good head start on next year's efforts right now.

3. Give your garden a nice warm winter blanket of chopped leaves. The earthworms will spend the winter chomping their way through them turning them into nutrients that can be used by next year's plants. In the spring, they can easily be worked into the top layers of the soil or they can be left as next year's mulch.

4. After fall cleanup, take pictures of your garden. This helps you to identify bare spots you want to fill in. An alternative is to draw up a sketch of your garden showing where each plant species is. Be sure to draw the plan to scale so you have sizes of your beds to study over the winter.

5. Take a nice cup of hot cider, sit in your favorite easy chair, and think back over this year's yard. Make a list of your favorite plants--those you want to use again. Think about plants you've seen in other gardens. If you want to add them, jot them down on your "wish" list.

Gardening is a year-round activity for me. If I'm not taking care of one, I'm planning for the next one. Each year I try to pick one or two projects for the next season to give my garden a fresh, new appearance. Right now, I see two projects for next season.

My projects for next year are:

Living wreaths. I just acquired two frames through the MyPoints* program. These wreaths have a clip on back to make building them a bit easier. Detailed directions for using these specially designed frames may be found here. If you don't want to invest the money, you can use regular wreath frames by following the directions in this article.

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