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Tips and tricks for maintaining your garden in the Autumn

Tips and tricks for maintaining your garden in the Autumn

The garden is a space that requires maintenance. As winter approaches, Autumn is an important season for any good gardener. It is indeed the season to prepare your garden for spring.

A well-tended garden during the Autumn season is sure to be a resplendent garden in the spring. So now is the time to clean up, make some adjustments and start planting new varieties of plants, fruits or vegetables. Here are some tips and tricks to properly maintain your garden.

The 3 steps to properly prepare your garden for Autumn

A green garden full of flowers in spring is ready for Autumn. It is important to take care of the garden so that it is armed to face the cold winter temperatures. And at the same time, you have to anticipate spring, prepare the soil and think about new plantings. Here are the 3 essential steps to properly prepare your garden for Autumn.

The season of great cleaning

To begin with, the first essential step is to take care of your garden. Now is the time to clean up the flower beds and remove the invasives that would prevent biodiversity from expressing itself. The good way to be quiet until the end of February!

Do not forget the lawn: renew the supply of natural fertilizer, garnish with sod the places that have suffered during the summer and perform the last mowing before winter in order to have a green carpet in the spring. This mowing should not be too short. The ideal is to leave about 5 cm of grass in order to give it the possibility of catching the daylight.

It’s also the season for the last fruits and vegetables. It is therefore important to harvest them so as not to let them rot all winter. And to prolong the harvest as long as possible, it is advisable to protect the plants in the vegetable garden in tarpaulins, from the first cold.

Potted plants should find refuge near a south-facing facade. For chilly plants such as exotic plants and plants from temperate regions, it is important to find them an indoor place to welcome them. A veranda or a cool room will do the trick and give these fragile flowers a space in which to spend the winter serenely. The fragile bedding plants can be covered with a wintering veil and the soil covered with a thick mulch to protect them as much as possible from the cold.

Prepare spring plantings

Now is the time to reflect on the flowering of sunny days and imagine your ideal garden with a thousand colors and scents.

October is the best time to start planting spring flowering bulbs. Flowers planted in the Autumn will be better anchored in the ground in the spring because they will have benefited from a significant supply of sap throughout the month of November. It is therefore the ideal month to plant hyacinths, irises, daffodils, crocuses, snowdrops and tulips, which have the particularity of resisting the cold. They will flower without too much difficulty from March to May and will offer pretty colors to the garden. An explosion of color in spring guaranteed to please everyone’s eyes!

It is also advisable to take advantage of the month of October to plant the shrubs and fruit trees. This is also the ideal period for certain vegetables in the garden such as cauliflowers, broccoli, carrots, spinach, peas, etc. Be careful, however, to make sure to leave a minimum distance between each planting so that each plant can develop properly.

Planting in the Autumn is the prerequisite for having flowers, fruits and vegetables in the spring. And in order to increase the odds, it is possible to add mulch or compost to new plantings.

Mulch consists of depositing a thin layer of natural materials on the ground which reconstitutes a natural humus. This protective layer made up of organic or mineral matter helps strengthen plant health. Each season, it is possible to use green waste in its mulching action. The ideal is to opt for a mulch made of wood chips or dead leaves. This is a simpler technique to set up than a compost and just as effective against weeds, evaporation etc …

Take care of your trees

To prepare the garden for spring, do not forget to prune the hedges in a reasoned way, trees and shrubs.

When the leaves turn yellow it is a sign to start pruning. In effect, this means that the plant is repatriating its vital forces and that it is time to lighten it from the leaves or peripheral branches. Be careful, however, not to excessively prune them. Indeed, the still evergreen foliage of the trees allows them to protect themselves from frost. We must therefore be careful to prune the minimum so as not to expose the trees, which would make them vulnerable.

Pruning dead wood is also essential to allow trees to withstand winter. Because lightened of their dead and diseased branches, the trees grow stronger and increase their defenses to face the winter frost.

Do not hesitate to leave your dead wood in the garden, it is an excellent refuge for insects which will be of service to you during the summer months!

You should also remember to trim the hedges one last time before winter to prevent them from storing too much moisture and starting to rot. Not to mention that autumn is a good time to plant conifers and heather shrubs. Rose bushes and some fruit trees planted in autumn become more robust. Rooted trees should be planted in a wide hole with a stake. Once the roots are covered with soil, do not forget to water to avoid air bubbles and cover the soil with mulch to face winter.

Autumn: the season to start your vegetable garden

Autumn is the perfect season to start setting up a vegetable garden. The season is favorable for new developments and planting. However, for a vegetable garden to be successful a few rules must be applied. Here are some tips for starting a vegetable garden, undertaking spring work and diversifying your gardening activities.

Choose the right location and the right architecture for your vegetable garden

To get started and to ensure that the garden will grow fruits and vegetables, you need to choose the right location. Plants in the vegetable garden need water and sun. By favoring a south or south-west orientation, the vegetable garden will give a good yield, on condition, however, that it is watered sufficiently.

If no place facing south or southwest is available, it is always possible to create a vegetable garden. The choice of plantations will be essential. It will be necessary to opt for plants that appreciate cool soil such as spinach.

When you’re new to vegetable garden gardening, it’s best to start with a small area, even if it means expanding it later. 10 m2 to 30 m2 are sufficient to start.

Once the vegetable garden has been defined, it is time to think about the plantations. Some plants work together and others don’t. In a vegetable patch, leeks and carrots are good friends. It is therefore advisable to plant them close to each other.

Conversely, tomatoes and cucumbers do not coexist well together, so avoid putting them side by side otherwise the risk is of developing diseases or the appearance of pests.

Finally, it is necessary to alternate the plantings from one year to the next in order to prevent the soil from becoming impoverished. Thus, it is advisable to avoid planting the same varieties in the same place for two years in a row. Several plants are also ideal for the novice vegetable gardener. This is the case with tomatoes, carrots, green beans, lettuce and zucchini which, with a lot of love and regular watering, should come to garnish the dining table.

Prepare your soil

In order for fruits or vegetables to grow, they must be provided with a welcoming soil. After removing the grass, roots and stones, it is advisable to plow the ground roughly, avoiding breaking the clods of earth. It is then necessary to cover the soil on the surface with compost in order to provide it with the necessary nutrients. The compost must be generous because the thicker the layer, the more the soil will be insulated from the cold.

Protect your soil

Once the soil is ready to receive the seeds, it must be protected. The best technique for this is to cover it with mulch. The objective is thus to protect the earth but also to create a climate favorable to the work of living beings in the soil, such as earthworms, which fertilize the soil via their droppings and participate in the natural aeration of the earth. A great ally for the gardener who must therefore be protected from winter cold and frost.

Tips and tricks for knowing which flowers to plant

Focus on 3 essential tools for an organic vegetable garden

There are many gardening tools out there and a few are perfect for organic vegetable gardens. They make it possible to work the land without disturbing the ecosystems present in the soil. An organic gardener will thus favor non-polluting manual tools over mechanical tools.

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