Do you believe that December is a bad month to garden? In fact, gardeners have a lot to accomplish this month and beyond, including cleaning up after the 2024 season and finishing up some tasks before 2025.
The following twelve things are on the off-season to-do list:
1.) Plant bulbs indoors. If you want to plant bulbs for indoor color throughout the winter, now is the time to start amaryllis, paperwhite, pre-chilled hyacinth, and any other bulbs. These are the ones that are currently available at garden centers, ready to be placed in pots near windows that receive plenty of sunlight.
2.) Give the pushed bulbs some water. In order to coax them into bloom weeks before they would typically blossom outside, some gardeners also pot up more conventional spring-flowering bulbs, such as tulips, daffodils, crocuses, etc.
Pots left in the ground where they will receive rain or snowmelt should be okay, but if you’re keeping them in a place that doesn’t get much rain, like a refrigerator, covered window well, or an unheated garage, make sure to check them frequently and add moisture as necessary to keep the soil moist.
3.) Examine the fragile bulbs you plan to keep indoors during the winter. In winter storage, non-cold-hardy bulbs like gladioli, cannas, and dahlias require a delicate balancing act. They shouldn’t get so wet that they rot, but they also shouldn’t become so dry that they wither.
Check bulbs in their storage medium (sand, peat moss, sawdust, etc.) on a regular basis. Any wet medium should be replaced, and any bone-dry media should be gradually moistened.
4.) Consider seeds. Make a list of the seeds you will need to purchase or order for the gardens of the following year, and inventory the seeds you have left over from the 2024 season. Orders are already being filled by seed vendors.
5.) Pruning that is targeted. Now that the trees have shed their leaves (signaling plants are hibernating for the winter), use any good winter days to trim fruit trees, shade trees, and shrubs that bloom in the summer.
However, do not prune spring-blooming trees and shrubs (dogwoods, redbuds, lilacs, azaleas, etc.) until immediately after bloom. Pruning those now will chop off the flower buds that have already formed for the following season.
6.) Heave check. Have any of your plants’ rootballs been forced partially out of the earth by soil freezes and thaws?
Before the exposed roots dry out, tamp them back down as soon as possible. First-year plants that haven’t had time to fully root are particularly prone to this heaving.
7.) Give the beds an edge. For tidy edges around your garden beds, use a power edger, half-moon edging tool, spade, or even a long-handled ice chopper. To capture the mulch next spring, leave an inch or two of lip.
When it’s not frozen, the soft earth in the winter comes up readily and prevents the lawn from encroaching on the beds.
The discarded pieces can be composted or used as sod to cover bare areas of the grass.
8.) Give the plants outside some water. All year long, water any evergreens you’re growing in pots outdoors whenever the soil is dry and not frozen.
Evergreens can use the moisture in the root zone to make up for the moisture they lose through their leaves throughout the winter.
9.) Pull weeds. Any winter annual weeds that have just begun to grow, such as henbit, hairy bittercress, deadnettle, chickweed, creeping speedwell, etc., as well as any pull weeds that you haven’t previously removed in the autumn.
However, you cannot remove poison ivy from trees with just your hands just because the leaves have fallen. Even in December or January, handling poison ivy plants without leaves can cause a skin reaction since the oil in the stems is still quite active throughout the year.
10.) Remove the dead yearly plants. Pull annual flowers and cold-killed crops and add them to the compost pile if you haven’t already.
When the cabbage and ornamental kale you planted for fall color fade to mush, do the same.
11.) Break apart the trimmings. Get rid of the pile of yard garbage, cut down the decorative grass, and use or hire a chipper-shredder.
Utilize the woody chippings as mulch over exposed beds and compost the vegetative material.
12.) Animal and weatherproof. Get your fencing and/or repellents in place to prevent deer damage, and if you haven’t already done so last month, install burlap barriers around winter-vulnerable plants to protect them from cold wind, especially minimally hardy broadleaf evergreens.
Gardening with George Weigel
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