It’s a common misconception that the colder, darker days of winter mean your garden requires little maintenance. Although your garden may appear to be in a season of down-time, there’s a lot of work that goes into keeping shrubs and bushes in prime condition through frosty nights, lawns green through wet spells and more generally to maintain order in your outside space.
But keeping everything as healthy, ordered and organised as possible over the period of short days and chilly nights that span from December to March for the best start to the spring season is easier said than done. From keeping your soil PH at its prime to ensuring hedges are neat and tidy , there’s a lot to be done.
In this blog post, Lawnmowers Direct offer their top winter gardening tips to help you through this inactive period in your garden until you see the tell-tale signs that spring is just around the corner.
Tip 1 – Keep off the grass!
As silly as it may seem, simply staying off your lawn can give it the best possible chance to fight off the wet days and frosty nights of winter. Your lawn is a delicate, and even more so when it’s exposed to the elements of sub-zero temperatures, heavy rain and little sunlight.
With oversaturation of lawn areas rife during the winter period, there’s only so much that attentive aeration and drainage can do. Although these processes can help bear the brunt of the heavy rainfall commonly experienced during the winter months across the UK, lawns are always going to be wetter than usual.
Walking on lawns when they’re soaked through does them no favours. Damaging the lawn bed, trampling the grass and creating muddy patches which litter your lawn not only looks unpleasant, it affects the health, appearance and growth of your grass as you move out of winter and into spring.
Tip 2 – Create a path
But what if you need to walk over your lawn to access areas of your garden? If you’re not prepared to make sections of your outdoor space off -bounds for a large proportion of the year, you need a practical solution.
Creating a pathway using shingle, paving slabs or wood can provide an interesting addition to your garden while helping to keep your lawn from becoming unnecessarily damaged.
Although there may be a small cost involved to get your walkway up and running, creating a path can save your lawn, and the amount of time needed to bring it back to life during the spring.
Tip 3 – Mow, but only at the right time
If you’ve done your prep properly, you’ve hopefully mowed your lawn ready for when winter sets in. Ideally, this should be done with a mulching mower, such as the Honda IZY mulching mower, as this will help feed your grass up for the cold months ahead.
But once winter hits, opinions are divided as to whether you should continue to mow your lawn or not. Keeping off the grass is a priority during the wet season, but what if your grass is becoming overgrown and at risk of discolouration?
A long story short, it should be fine to mow your lawn on a high setting intermittently to keep your grass from becoming overly long and limp. But remember, only cut your grass when it’s as dry as possible to avoid damage to the lawn bed and, vitally, never mow your lawn before a frost, as this will detrimentally damage the grass.
Gardening in winter might not be quite as good as enjoying some therapeutic outdoor maintenance during the spring and summer months, and the overall lack of growth and results might prove demoralising. But winter garden care is vital for optimal growth come spring, so it’s important to do your due diligence on dark winter to reap the benefits down the line.
BIO: This blog post was contributed by Lawnmowers Direct, an online supplier of garden machinery and tools.