With much of the Front Range facing the possibility of snow tonight and sub-freezing temperatures mid-week, here are a few considerations to care for your landscape:
- If you haven’t yet fertilized your lawn for the last time this year, it’s still worth doing before the snow hits. Fertilizing in late fall keeps your lawn slightly green over the winter. It will photosynthesize at a slow rate rather than depleting its energy reserves, which will result in more vigorous growth in spring. You probably need to jump on this task right now since the cold weather is supposed to set in this afternoon.
- Make sure your sprinkler system is protected from freeze damage. Drain or cover any exposed parts, especially the backflow preventer.
For much of the Front Range, the forecast is predicting only small amounts of snow. A few inches is unlikely to damage tree branches with its weight. However, if you live in an area where they’re predicting a big dump, be sure to knock the snow off tree or shrub branches as needed. Here’s a previous post I wrote about protecting during heavy spring snowstorms that may be helpful.- After the overnight sub-freezing temperatures, many perennial flowers will die back to ground level. This summer’s growth can be cut back this fall if it’s no longer attractive, or can be left standing until next spring.
- For the veggie gardeners out there, if you’re still cleaning up your vegetable garden, you may be interested in two videos: First, should you compost or trash your dead tomato plant? and not to spill the beans, but how to wrestle a dead tomato plant into a trash bag.
- Enjoy the last few colorful leaves of the mild fall. It’s likely the wind will blow them off the trees this week!
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