Gardening This Weekend: December 5, 2024
Here’s my condensed list for this first part of December – gardening tasks that deserve your consideration.
PLANT
• Pansies, pinks, ornamental cabbage and kale and other winter color to spruce up your beds. Apply a water-soluble, high-nitrogen fertilizer a couple of days after planting to get the new transplants off to a quick start.
• Daffodils and grape hyacinths before the end of the month. These do not need any cooling in the refrigerator.
• Tulips and Dutch hyacinths that have been “pre-chilling” in the refrigerator for 45 days or longer at 45 degrees can be planted into the ground starting in mid-December.
PRUNE
• If frost has hit your area, remove all dead stubble from perennials, annuals, bananas, and vegetable plantings. Grind it and use it in the compost.
• Damaged branches from trees, especially if they might break and fall in wind or ice storms.
• Mow lawn one more time to remove last of the fallen leaves. Mowing also eliminates many rank-growing weeds.
FERTILIZE
• Ryegrass you have planted as temporary cover or to overseed warm-season turf with high-quality lawn food with up to half its nitrogen in slow-release form. Water moderately after feeding.
• Houseplants sparingly during the dark days of winter. Your goal should probably be to maintain them at a status quo, not encourage them to grow vigorously.
• Poinsettias and other pots of Christmas color will not need supplemental fertilizers. Growers have given them adequate supplies to carry them through.
ON THE LOOKOUT
• Cover tender vegetation with lightweight frost cloth when extreme cold is expected. If you don’t have it on hand, buy it before a cold spell is expected. Stores can sell out quickly.
• Houseplants for signs of population explosions of scale, mealy bugs and white flies. You’ll probably want to take plants outside while you spray them. Put them in a shaded spot out of the wind. Remember to bring them back indoors in a couple of hours.
• Disconnect all hoses this winter anytime a freeze is expected. Even “freeze-proof” faucets will allow water in the lines to freeze back into the walls of your house. (I speak from personal experience.)