We are only a couple of weeks away from the official start of winter. The end of the gardening season is upon us and you should perform a final garden cleanup to end the year right. This will allow you to have the satisfaction of knowing that your garden will get the best possible start in spring when the world comes alive again.
By now you should have already done fall landscaping tasks like:
- Planted spring flowering bulbs
- Raked up leaves
- Fertilized your lawn
- Performed a late season seeding if needed
- Winterized your gardening equipment
- Chosen a snow removal method
Close off the gardening season with one final inspection of your yard. Walk around the perimeter and check for signs of problems like broken sprinkler heads. If more leaves have fallen, take a moment to rake them up. They can be stored for later use as mulch or placed in a compost pile. Check for any tools like shovels that have been accidently left outside and put them away so that they do not rust from snowy conditions. Throw away or recycle leftover pots.
If you have not done so in the past, this can also be a good time to take a moment to map out the current layout of your garden on a piece of graph paper. This will allow you to do some planning during the winter months of any changes that you would like to make.
Have you done your final garden cleanup of the year yet? What other tasks do you perform as part of this?
Image by liketearsintherain under a Flickr Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License
