Winter gardening ensures better spring results

While most people are hunkering down for a long winter’s nap, diligent gardeners know there’s still work to be done to prepare trees, lawns, shrubs and flower beds for spring. Cody Zesiger, assistant professor at Utah State University Extension, said winter gardening is about preservation and renewal.

“We prevent damage from harsh winter conditions,” he said. “Renewal tidies up the plants and stages the garden for the next year through pruning, deadheading, etc.”

For the first three or four years after a tree is planted, Zesiger said it’s vital to wrap the trunk to prevent cracking on the southwest side. Sunscald and freezing weather can cause tree trunks to crack and damage the delicate tissue beneath the bark. 

Wrapping the tree from the base to where the branches begin can help reflect the sun away from the tender trunks, allowing the tree to grow healthy and strong. 

“If you’ve ever seen trunks that have that damage, and it’s always the southwest-facing side, where it’s cracking and the bark is peeling away, the tree is always less healthy moving on,” he said. “There’s a tree wrap cloth that’s kind of semi-porous that they can get at nurseries, sometimes at box stores and definitely on Amazon. If they visit the botanical center in the winter, they’ll notice that all of our young trees are wrapped.”

Managing leaves isn’t just for autumn, as leaves continue to fall throughout the winter. While some leaves can be mulched with a lawn mower, too many leaves in flower beds can suffocate new growth.

“If you’ve got a thick layer of leaves on plant tissues, it’s kind of like putting cardboard out there,” Zesiger said. “On those nice, dry days in winter, sometimes it’s good to blow those leaves away.”

While grooming ornamental grasses is best done before Thanksgiving, it can still be done in the colder months. Semi-evergreen or evergreen grasses should be raked, not clipped, by gently combing out dead blades to encourage new growth in the spring. Deciduous ornamental grass can be given a buzz-cut treatment, leaving about six inches of the plant above ground.

Zesiger said it will soon be time to prune grapes and fruit trees. The weather and the number of trees to prune will determine when to start, but it’s usually best in February or March. Pruning fruit trees before they have their first buds is optimal and learning how to prune grape vines will create a more bountiful harvest.

The USU Botanical Center in Kaysville, at 80 E. 725 South, offers pruning demonstrations and has resources online at extension.usu.edu/yardandgarden to help beginning pruners clip with confidence. 

“For the demo, we usually charge a small fee and that fee is used to buy more trees,” Zesiger said. “It’s just knowing those kinds of things and not having to be disappointed by having a tree that’s in bad shape because you knew to wrap it, or knowing how to prune your grapes and then you get grapes every year. Those are things that can be done in the winter or early spring that just set people up for success.”