Clean Up Your Garden at Year’s End

Photo courtesy of sisudave at Flickr.com.

At the end of the year, you may be tempted to leave the plant clutter in your garden until next spring; after all, it’ll add to the fertility of the soil, right? Maybe, maybe not — but one thing it’ll definitely do is provide places where plant diseases and animal pests can hide and even flourish over the winter.

Instead of leaving plant debris lying there, clean it up and compost it at the end of the season. You’ll also need to remove old mulches and replace them with new material.

Don’t think you’re immune because you’re a container gardener: if you don’t clean up your pots between uses, you run the risk of diseases and pests jumping from one generation of plants to the next.