Winter Garden Maintenance

In my last post, I talked about resolving to spend time working in my garden every week--even if just for a few minutes. Well, there's not much going on in my garden right now, and there's probably not much going on in yours. The only things noticeably growing in my yard in this cold weather are the camellias and pansies. You might be wondering: what does one do in the garden in the winter time?

One of my neighbor's camellias that I
can see from my yard.

Well, to keep my pansies blooming, I'm feeding them with some all-purpose Miracle-Gro water-soluble fertilizer every couple of weeks. I brew it slightly on the weaker side just to safe in this cold weather--there is  such a thing as too much fertilizer. Better too little than too much. I also keep them deadheaded (pinching off the faded flowers) to keep them blooming. I water them occasionally, but it really depends on how the weather's been and how the soil feels. The weather has been really erratic this month--we had really warm weather a couple of weeks ago, followed by really cold weather, and raining off an on. I probably water them once a week on average to keep them from drying out. My little violas stopped blooming for a few weeks, so I took a closer look at them and discovered they were covered in aphids. I broke out an insecticidal soap I had and sprayed them down yesterday. Hopefully they will be covered in blooms again by next week.

I continue to build my compost pile, alternating kitchen scraps with leaf litter from my yard. I water it occasionally when it looks dry (it breaks down faster when it's damp). I don't turn it, though--turning it just slows it down this time of year by letting all the heat escape.

Cuttings on my windowsill

I held on to two of my cuttings that didn't root when the others did, but still looked healthy. One was a scented geranium and the other was a hydrangea. They're covered in roots now! Even though it took them probably twelve weeks to root (twice as long as the other scented geranium and hydrangea cuttings), I didn't mind them sitting in their pretty little glass containers on my windowsill while I waited. I finally got around to potting them up this weekend.

If you're looking for a garden project, it's not too late to plant pansies here in Middle Georgia. This past week I saw they still had plenty of 6-pack plugs of pansies at Home Depot, but I don't recommend planting those this late. Head out to your local garden center and look for pansies in individual pots--3" pots or larger. If you buy plugs, they will stop blooming for a few weeks while they try to put out roots in their new home, and who wants to wait another month to have flowers in your yard? The pansies in larger pots will already have enough roots to keep blooming happily until summer.