This is Ben Schow with Utah State University Extension in Washington County. I have a couple gardening tips for you as we go through the month of November and into December. We have finally got some cold weather. It's been a pretty warm fall up until recently, but there are a couple of things that gardeners love doing during the winter time, and if you're new to the area, or if there's some things that you want to try, winter time is a great time to plan and get things done.
One of them is that ground is still workable in most parts of the state. If you want to plant some fall bulbs for spring flowers or garlic for next year, you can still do that as long as your soil is still workable. Also, it's a great time to get rid of some of the debris and some of the stuff lying around the garden. Debris and different piles of wood, or just old plants, often harbor different diseases or pests, insects, or eggs that over winter will hatch in the spring. We can often get rid of a lot of our pest problems by getting rid of some of the debris piles and cleaning up our gardens a bit.
The last tip that I have is for fruit trees. If you have fruit trees, and if you ever get what we call southwest sun damage, or sun skull that occurs on the bark of the trees, on the trunks, and even some of the branches where the bark will split, that's damage that occurs during the winter time and shows up later in the year. If it's damage that you have or are worried about, you can either paint the trunks of your tree white with a latex based paint mixed with a little bit of water or you can use wraps. There are plastic wraps or paper wraps that are disposable. People can put them on in the winter time and take them off in the spring after the danger of damage is over to prevent that damage.
I hope everyone has a great winter. Stay warm.
