Cleanup Your Garden: 10 Tasks for Alberta Gardeners
Our garden today, 28 September 2020
If you’re a gardener in Alberta, you’re getting pretty close to the end of your gardening season. The frost is looming, and parts of the province have already had snow a few times.
Luckily, here in Lacombe, we seem to be getting a really lovely second summer. September has been beautiful. Usually, this time of year, the leaves are done and gone, but this year they’re just hitting their full beautiful colourful peak.
Wherever you are in the province, it's not a bad idea to do some garden clean up this time of year. It’ll make life a lot easier in the spring. So here’s my list of things to do. Don’t try to do this all in one weekend, take on one task at a time, and don’t worry too much about making sure it's all done before the snow flies.
Harvest any remaining veggies and store them for winter (I’ll write some ideas for this in another post).
Work in leftover foliage from garden plants to improve your soil structure. It will decay over the winter and return essential nutrients to the soil as organic matter.
Rake up most of your leaves, put them in the composter, or work them straight into the soil. They’re the best kind of soil conditioner you can get.
Clean up herbaceous perennials, but leave a few messy leaves, twigs, branches in some corners to give solitary overwintering bees and pollinating bugs a place to hide.
Till your garden, or turn the soil by hand. If you’re doing it by hand with a spade, just leave the soil in big chunks, it’ll break down by itself over winter, and it will improve soil structure.
Clean out sad annuals from pots, replace with fall annuals, like ornamental cabbage, which can withstand temps as low as -15. Add some chrysanthemums too.
Collect seed from sweet peas, poppies, anything you want to collect seed from. For sweet peas, make sure you shell them and then let the seeds dry before storing somewhere dry and dark.
Keep watering your potted flowers that still look ok deadhead and keep watering and extend that season as much as possible.
Dig out gladiolas, calla lilies, canna lilies. These tender perennials are right on edge. They may survive the winter, but they may not. Last year we had almost 2 weeks of -40; they won’t withstand that. Dig them out. Lay them out to dry on newspaper or cardboard. If you can’t lay them in the sun, run a fan towards them for a few days. Then cut the tops off and trim up the roots. Store them somewhere cool, dark, and well ventilated for the winter. In a single layer in a cardboard box with holes works. Or in a mesh produce bag. Check them once a month over winter to see if any are rotting.
Bring tender perennials indoors, like begonias, for the winter, or take cuttings. Prune back hard, water well, move to shady space for a day, and then start bringing them in overnights, back out in the morning. Reduce the amount of time they’re outside until they’re staying in all day. Quarantine these plants somewhere like your garage or a separate room for 2 weeks before moving them anywhere near houseplants.
Water and mulch trees, shrubs, and perennials, especially new ones. Give them a nice long soak and a thick mulch blanket to help insulate them for the winter.
Are you excited about winter? I’m not. The older I’ve gotten, the less I like winter. And let’s be real, my skinny little whippet has never loved winter, especially not the snowsuit and boots and scarves she has to wear to go outside. But, at least as gardeners, we’ve got dreaming, planning, and scheming for next season to keep us going through the cold.
