Late Fall Gardening Tips in Utah

Garden Tools and Equipment

As the weather begins cooling down in the early fall, prepping your garden for the even colder season ahead is important. Glover Nursery’s late fall gardening tips will cover everything you should do to winterize your lawn.

Remember, a bit of cleaning work now beats doing it in the spring, leaving you more time to browse seed catalogs and do some actual planting! 

Note: We have a separate guide for early fall gardening tips.

 

Tree Care Tips for Late Fall Gardening

Trees and shrubs, especially evergreens, should be watered heavily going into winter and especially during periods of winter drought. We recommend deep soaking any plants in rain shadows of other plants or buildings.

It’s also good to apply an antitranspirant (such as Wilt Pruf) to evergreen trees and shrubs to prevent moisture loss over the season. Antitranspirants are substances applied to the leaves of plants to protect them from drying out too quickly.

 

Lawn and Garden Care

Wrap evergreen shrubs like arborvitae and upright junipers to protect them from breaking and bending with a heavy snow load. Burlap tree wrap or jute twine work well for this. If you’re struggling to visualize, check out our YouTube video on how to wrap a tree for winter.

If you do have shrubs or trees you need to move, this would be the best time to do so since they tend to be less stressed this time of year compared to other seasons.

To help prevent disease, keep leaves raked off the lawn and mow the lawn short for the winter.

Pro Tip: You can prevent salt damage to trees and shrubs by using an ice melter substitute like sand.

 

Rose Flower Gardening Tips

Clean up all debris and leaves around roses. Dispose of leaves if your roses have any disease problems. Do not compost diseased leaves, as they still carry pathogens that may harm healthy roses. We recommend separating diseased plants from compostable ones.

Mulch roses to protect the graft union during the cold winter months. Additionally, roses should be pruned if they are overgrown and are vulnerable to breakage from snow load. Heavy pruning should be done in the spring when the leaf buds begin swelling.

 

Pond Care

Another thing to add to your late fall gardening tips checklist is pond care. If you have a pond or a water feature in your yard, it’s time to winterize it for the upcoming season! The steps are the same for the early fall checklist, but we’ll list them here for your convenience:

  1. Remove floating plants like water hyacinth
  2. Take out or store tropical plants indoors
  3. Stop feeding the fish (if you haven’t already)
  4. Stop fertilizing pond plants in early September
  5. Clean out dead leaves and debris
  6. Consider covering with a net to keep out falling leaves
  7. Cut back dormant plants and sink them to the deepest part of the pond

 

Caring for Garden Tools and Equipment

Store all tools indoors (ideally in a secure garden shed) to prevent them from rusting. Hand tools must be cleaned, oiled, and sharpened in preparation for spring. Don’t worry, you won’t be needing them anytime soon!

Power tools should be drained of fuel before storing. It’s also important to change their spark plugs and sharpen their blades so they’re ready to use come next spring.

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