Tips from Olle Garden Bed: What To Do With Your Hosta Plants Before Winter
Want to know what you should do with your host plants before winter comes? Should they be cut? Do they need protection to help them survive the winter? The following content also has some reference value for raised garden beds.
With the arrival of cool autumn temperatures, the host plants usually begin to show a lot of wear and tear. The once bright, green, and erect leaves begin to fade to yellowish brown. When they do this, their leaves fall to the ground quickly.
If this is not enough, snails, slugs and other insects will do the final damage to the plant, chewing holes in the remaining leaves one after another. One thing is for sure - it left the boarders and the flower beds where they grew. It looks bad at all!
So this brings us back to the question, what should you do with your host plants before winter comes? It turns out that it is actually one of the best times to work with your host before winter
It not only helps to clean and freshen the appearance of flower beds, but also is the best time to prepare the host for the coming winter. Better still, it can lay the foundation for their better growth in the spring and summer next year than ever before!
How to take care of the Horsta plants before winter comes
When it comes to pre winter care of host plants, there are three main tasks to be noted:
- Cut and remove leaf crowns and remaining flower stems.
- Split and transplant the host with weeds.
- Cover the tree crown for winter.
The following is an in-depth understanding of the three and some additional tips to help your host develop better next year than ever before.
Reduce host plants
One of the most important tasks you can perform for hosts is to reduce them at the end of the season. It can not only make your flower bed look clean, but also play an important role in keeping the flower bed healthy.
Once the leaves begin to die, cut the thorns an inch above the soil line. By doing so, plants can stop wasting resources trying to heal dying leaves. Instead, it will start saving for future growth and bigger flowers!
The longer a dying or damaged leaf stays on a plant, the more resources it spends trying to cure it. But once removed, the roots of the plant begin to store energy for the next year.
This is why it is very important to remove the flower stems of the host plants immediately after the season ends, because plants can use these resources to keep the leaves of the host plants healthy and strong until late autumn.
Additional benefits
In addition to helping Hosta save energy, cutting down old leaves can also play a key role in preventing diseases and insects. Whether it's late autumn or next spring or summer.
The used leaves provide excellent cover for a long string of insects. The dying leaves can not only become a food source for pests, but also provide winter protection for their eggs. Then the eggs hatched in the spring of the next year become an insect problem next year!
Finally, all these rotten leaves can keep the ground below moist. This makes the soil and plant base easy targets for the development and growth of mold and other diseases.
Unfortunately, by keeping all the old leaves and stems intact throughout the winter, pests and diseases can not only survive, but also thrive. By the next spring - both will come back to hurt your plants more than ever before.
Partitioning and transplanting weedy host plants
Autumn is not only a good time to cut down plants, but also the best time to dig and cut weeds. Although the host plants can be separated and survive almost any time during the growing season, the autumn division brings a series of advantages to your plants.
First of all, in late autumn, it is easy to know which plants grow too big for their space. At this point, you can easily see the size of the plant and some areas of the bed that the new transplant can help fill.
But more importantly, by splitting in late autumn, you can succeed immediately! They can be adjusted in the soil before winter, and then ready to grow fully in early spring. Unfortunately, if you wait until spring, plants will lag behind when they readjust to the soil.
The end result is that a plant cannot grow so full at all, and may not blossom in the first season. The same is true for the summer division, because plants must regenerate their leaves.
The good news is that splitting and porting the host is easy. Just dig out the plants, divide them into the size you like, and replant them
Cover winter protection
Finally, it is very important to provide a little protection for your host before winter comes. Especially if you have created new departments and migrations.
Although the host is a very cold resistant perennial plant, they can not be protected from winter damage. The tree crown exposed to bare soil is vulnerable to various damages - from thawing and freezing to crawling out of the ground - to too severe exposure, or even complete freezing.
The way to provide protection is by covering. For best results, place a few inches of compost on top of the crown. Adding compost to the tree crown in autumn not only helps protect them, but also provides them with low and slow nutrition when they come out in early spring
After the compost is in place, finally cover the plants with a few inches of mulch. The mulch will help to hold the compost in place and provide additional protection throughout the winter.
Some final nursing skills
If you divide some hosts into new plants, you'd better water them several times in late autumn in case of drought. Although the host is entering a dormant state, water can keep the crown moist because they will adapt to the soil again and take root.
Last but not least, the problem of fertilization in autumn often occurs in hosts and other perennial plants. Fertilization should be avoided in autumn, except for covering with a little compost and/or mulch to protect winter.
Unfortunately, fertilization late in the fall will stimulate unnecessary late season growth, which is both fragile and fragile. If a plant tries to produce new leaves, new roots will grow not only above the soil, but also in the crown below. Instead, wait until early spring to fertilize.
This is to prepare the plants for this autumn and winter, and the gorgeous plants for next spring and summer!