Plant Care

What requirements are necessary for a particular cultivar depends on the season. Not much if anything will be on your gardeners list for the season of winter.

But depending on the variety you may have duties to fulfill in the fall such as simple cutting back or applying additional mulch over the plants crown and root system. The crown can best be described as the point at which the roots join the stem.

One duty in preparing for winter is never ever to allow flowering perennials, shrubs, trees, ground covers etc to go into winter on the dry side as dry freezing can kill an otherwise healthy specimen.

Be sure not to apply fertilizer during the fall as you do not want to encourage new tender growth.

Do apply a quality fall weed preventer which will take care of problem varieties like chickweed and henbit.

Fall besides being a pleasant time of the year is also an excellent time to plant perennials.

So purchase new ones or divide overcrowded perennials to increase your quantities as desired.

For instructions on making divisions on several popular plants please go to our home page and click on the main heading of Perennial Plant Care, when this page opens you will see a link to dividing perennials.

Here you will find instructions on this procedure for Hosta, Daylily and Liriope varieties.

With the arrival of late winter or early spring you will need to perform clean up duties in your various landscape beds.

Trim back varieties where appropriate, remove weeds that managed to escape your application of weed preventer, plant new perennial selections, divisions can also be accomplished at this time and apply fresh mulch if required.