Putting Your Garden to Bed: A Canadian Fall Checklist

The first hard frosts have arrived across most of Canada, and if your garden is looking a little tired, that's okay — it's supposed to. Fall clean-up isn't about making everything tidy. It's about setting your plants up to survive a Canadian winter and come back strong. Here's the checklist I work through in my own Edmonton garden every year.

Leave something standing

It goes against every tidying instinct, but don't cut everything down. Coneflowers, rudbeckia and ornamental grasses left standing feed birds all winter and shelter the good insects that overwinter in hollow stems. Cut them back in spring instead, when you see new growth starting.

Clean up anything diseased

The exception to the rule above: anything that had black spot, mildew or blight this year comes out now, and it goes in the garbage — not the compost. Home compost doesn't get hot enough to kill those spores, and you don't want to spread them around next spring.

Mulch — but wait for the freeze

Mulch perennials and shrubs after the ground has frozen, not before. The goal isn't to keep plants warm; it's to keep them cold, so freeze-and-thaw cycles don't heave roots out of the ground. A few inches of straw, shredded leaves or wood mulch after a few hard frosts does the job.

Water before freeze-up

If fall has been dry, give trees, shrubs and evergreens a deep drink before the ground freezes hard. Evergreens especially keep losing moisture through their needles all winter, and they can't replace it from frozen soil.

One last planting window

There's still time for two things. Garlic can go in any time before the ground freezes solid — plant cloves pointy-end up, about 5 cm deep, and mulch well. And fall is a wonderful time to plant wildflower seed bombs: many wildflower seeds need a period of cold to germinate well, and a fall planting lets winter do that work for you. Just press each seed bomb halfway into loosened soil, water it in, and let the snow tuck it in. Our Canadian Wildflower 6-pack is made for exactly this — plant now, blooms in spring.

Don't forget the hardscape

Drain and store hoses before they freeze and split, empty clay pots (wet soil expands and cracks them), and bring in anything ceramic you love. Ten minutes now saves real money in spring.

That's it — a weekend's worth of small jobs, and your garden is ready for whatever winter brings. Sweet dreams, garden. See you in spring.