Keith Ramsey: All right. Today, we're talking about gardening during the wintertime winter work. Winter is a great time to take a look out your window and look at areas that need improvement. Either from a view standpoint, areas that need a screen, or looking at the bones of the landscape.
[00:00:55]when we talk about bones, evergreen plants, the hardscapes, the walls figuring out where you need more structure or figuring out where you need a ceiling or a canopy that you can do with a tree or an Arbor entry to do a different area of the yard, with the, with an Arbor It's a great time of year because the trees are deciduous.
[00:01:13] In the middle of spring and summertime, you're in your backyard, and you've got total privacy as winter comes on, you've got six months of deciduous trees dropping their leaves. Suddenly you can see, straight into the neighbor's house, you can see TV when it comes on, you can see the lights.
[00:01:28]Yeah,
[00:01:29] Joe Woolworth: we just moved, and I didn't even realize that my back neighbors existed until all the trees
[00:01:32] Keith Ramsey: fell down. It's definitely a, I built a house a few years ago, bought the lot, and built the house at the Lake. So it's a country setting. Leaves drop. There's an old camper sitting in the woods, on the lot next to us. I never saw it. It doesn't bother me at all.
[00:01:50] Cause I'm there during the summertime. But when I go there during the wintertime, it's not the site that I want to see. It's not pretty.
[00:01:56]Joe Woolworth: you can get a better sense of your land, but what specifically makes a lot more sense in the winter than in the summer when it comes to yard work.
[00:02:03]Keith Ramsey: There are all kinds of things you can do in the wintertime. Looking at your lawn, and if it's not dark green doing more fertilization, that's a, it's a great time to do fertilization. It's a great time to do all of the ground covers. You can do dormant seating top-dressed it with black soil.
[00:02:19] And then in the spring, you're going to get germination pretty quick. You can do lawn fertilization, like I said, mulching and pine strong. There's no better time to do it. Perennial plants are, have died all the way back to the ground, or you've got that is not looking at its prime, and it needs to be cut back. Ornamental grasses need to be cut back. In February, you start cutting your roses back. There are all kinds of dormant pruning that can be done. And when you're looking at a tree in the wintertime when it doesn't have foliage on it, you can see that we're branches are crossing or branches are rubbing or taken in and lifting a canopy a little bit so that you can walk under it.
[00:02:55]So that you can see through it, a layer in a Japanese maple. It is just so much clear when there aren't leaves on the tree. So you can do that kind of stuff. But doing all your cleanup, all your pruning the stuff that requires a fair amount of effort, and you pretty much produce your own heat.
[00:03:12] You know what I mean? When you're moving around, and you're really actively working, on a day when it's. 25 degrees to 40 degrees, whatever it's comfortable outside, a light jacket, and you probably end up taking it off. Mulching in particular, though, hardwood mulch is what I always recommend.
[00:03:28]it's organic, it's natural, and color. It's consistent. It's readily available. It's a by-product. When you're standing next to a mulch pile, It might be a hundred degrees inside that mulch pile. You're shoveling mulch, and heat is actually coming off the mulch.
[00:03:43]It's not a comfortable thing to do, and it's 80 degrees outside. Looking at your landscape, looking at the definition, digging some edges so that you've got that golf green look to the yard, given the lawn a better shape and then creating beds or around the lawn.
[00:03:58] But getting that kind of stuff out of the way, the perennials aren't up yet, you've got everything trimmed back. you don't have to be tender and delicate around the plants at that time of the
[00:04:07] Joe Woolworth: year. Is there any planting that makes more sense to do in the winter that will either benefit you in the winter?
[00:04:13] You'll see some blooming, or it will be a benefit in the coming season.
[00:04:16]Keith Ramsey: I'll never stop talking about this and that. And nobody will ever really believe me, but winter's the best time to plant stuff. dormant planting is ideal. You put stuff in the ground.
[00:04:28]Our ground never freezes. Hard enough that you can't dig. we might, you know, the very top crust of the soil, my freeze plants grow roots every day during the wintertime. So the most stressful time of the year for plants in June, July, and August, September. the further you can get from that period of time, the more roots you're going to have.
[00:04:46]And again, you go outside, something you can do with your kids, go pick a tree, Go pick a handful of shrubs, plant five or six blueberries, You're not going to break a sweat, doing it. It's the prime time to do it. Now. Plants will be rooted in usually when plants not well-rooted in you get sporadic growth.
[00:05:07] You'll see one little twig, pushing growth on three sides of the plant. Once a plant gets rooted in, you'll see a good full flush. So when you plan the wintertime by spring, you'll see it. Good. Full flush planting in the wintertime is ideal.
[00:05:21] Joe Woolworth: planting in the wintertime dormantly is anything you should be looking at to the plant you might need to address?
[00:05:27] Do they need as much watering? Is it just
[00:05:29] Keith Ramsey: put it in the ground? , you still need to look at a plant. On a weekly basis, basically. If you look at a plant and it looks good, are you looking at a plant, and it's dry, you water it. we tend to have enough moisture in the wintertime.
[00:05:40] there are lots of winners. You'd never have to water. But it's not a bad idea to keep an eye on them. Winter winds, cold temperatures. All dry plan out, whether it's got foliage on it or not, foliage is a really good indicator of being dry. When we talked about plant wilting, you can look out the window and see this it's wilted.
[00:05:57] It's either too wet or too dry. It's hard to tell from what if it's wilted, but if it doesn't have foliage on it if it's a deciduous plant, it's a little harder to tell. So you do need to go out and check them periodically. But it's typical that you don't have to do a lot of watering, if any, watering at all during the wintertime.
[00:06:14]It also saves. Most of us pay for water now. It saves on the water bill to plant during the wintertime here in North.
[00:06:21] Joe Woolworth: Carolina, we very rarely see any snow. Are there any specific kinds of plans did you have to watch out for when there's a frost warning?
[00:06:27] Keith Ramsey: Not really most of the plants that, people are always when they buy plants, they'll call back and say, is there anything I needed to do?
[00:06:33] I need to wrap my plan up. If they bought a planet, a nursery, and it was outside, it's rare That we cover plants or that they would need to be covered in the landscape. We might cove...
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