Autumn In The Garden: Preparing For The Next Season. Preparing The Garden For Winter

Autumn in the garden is not only beautiful, but also quite troublesome. There are a lot of things to do and think about a lot - how the trees and shrubs prepare for the cold will determine their health and harvest.

Rule # 1. Cleanliness

The first rule of a healthy garden is autumn cleaning. What needs to be cleaned in the garden? Fallen leaves, branches, carrion. They must not only be raked into heaps, but laid in compost, and completely removed from diseased trees and shrubs outside the territory, because all this is a source of disease for the next season.

Mummified fruits remain unnoticed by many gardeners. But in vain! Pests also hibernate in them. And despite the fact that getting them can be quite difficult, you still need to try to do this.

Rule # 2. Sanitary pruning

In fact, this event supplements the first rule, since sanitary pruning is nothing more than the removal of branches affected by diseases, and as a result, pests from the site. However, in addition to diseased branches from plants, it is necessary to cut off broken branches, as well as those that thicken the crown.

In shrubs, everything that grows to the ground must also be removed. Shoots rubbing against the soil will still not give a full harvest next year, and if they do disfigure, the berries on them will be dirty and prone to disease.

Rule # 3. Formative pruning

Along with sanitary pruning, on such shrubs as gooseberries and currants, it would be good to immediately carry out formative and rejuvenating pruning. These crops begin to bloom early in the spring, so it is more convenient to form them in the fall, after the end of leaf fall.

Not afraid of late autumn pruning and honeysuckle, lemongrass, actinidia, viburnum, raspberries, blackberries and covering grapes.

Rule # 4. Healing wounds

It will not be superfluous to inspect the trees for gum removal. Most often it appears on cherries, cherries, apricots, plums and peaches. The formed nodules must be removed to living tissue with a sharp knife, the bark in their place must be cleaned and covered with garden varnish or nigrol putty (70% nigrol mixed with 30% oven ash).

Rule # 5. Protection of the trunk from frost and burns

Autumn whitewashing is also a very important agricultural technique. Trees bleached in the fall receive not only disinfection of the near-ground part of the trunk, but also protection from winter and early spring burns.

It is necessary to carry out whitewashing when setting the temperature regime around +3 ° C, on a dry sunny day. It is necessary to whiten with a lime solution: 2 kg of slaked lime per 10 liters of water + 300-400 g of copper sulfate + 50-100 g of casein glue (the resulting composition should correspond to the density of sour cream).

Apply the mixture with a simple straw brush, from the base of the trunk and up to a height of about 30 cm of first order skeletal branches (all together this is about 1 m above the ground).

Rule # 6. Moisture charging irrigation

Water-charging watering of the garden is also an important autumn event. Many neglect it, relying on autumn rains, and in fact it is necessary not only to water the trees for the winter, but also to increase their resistance to frost, to ensure the full growth of the root system, therefore, natural precipitation is not a substitute for it.

The time for carrying out this agricultural technique comes with the onset of leaf fall. Somewhere this is the last decade of September (northern and middle zones of gardening), somewhere - the end of October (southern).

Average indicators of irrigation rates are about 10-15 buckets per 1 square meter. on well-structured soils, under the tree trunk circle, and about 6 under shrubs. On light soils and with regular irrigation of the garden, this volume can be reduced.

It is necessary to treat water-charging irrigation with caution when the groundwater is close, and where their level is close to 0.5 m, it is better to completely abandon it.

Rule # 7. Shelter plants for the winter

In regions with difficult climatic conditions, care must be taken to ensure that frost-resistant plants can survive the winter. To do this, grapes, figs, and in some areas and raspberry bushes, are bent to the ground and covered with spruce branches, fallen leaves, non-woven materials, earth, snow … Currant and gooseberry bushes are high, up to 12-15 cm, mulch.

Rule # 8. Only clean inventory

An obligatory rule for a good gardener is pre-winter maintenance of equipment. The rake, hoe, shovels, pitchforks, pruning shears, garden saws must be kept clean, so they must be thoroughly washed, dried, if necessary, tweaked, disinfected with a 5% solution of potassium permanganate and lubricate the cutting parts with machine oil.