Wilkinsons Landscapes Ltd’s Post

Transcript

Hi, I'm Simon Wilkinson, Manager, Director, Wilkinson's Landscapes, and I'm going to talk to you about how we can help protect our plants through the winter. The winter weather can be really harsh and plants and one of the ways that we can help alleviate this is by using fleecing, which is basically just like a nice warm blanket before you plant. Now I'm going to show you a few simple steps on how to do this. So we're going to start with the Cordyline. Australis, which is the Australian Cabbage palm. Now the nice thing about this plant is it kind of comes with its own fleece, with a little bit of input from us. Now what we're going to do is cram the leaves up, just leaving. Not overly tight so we're causing any damage, but you know enough, sort of hold yourself together and adds take an old Leaf news after tie the top up. So there we go. That's a good start. The next thing to do. Issues from Keynes, maybe even some wooden sticks, and what we're doing here is just giving the opportunity to trap some air around the plant. Because at the end of the day, it's not the police itself that's doing the work, it's actually the air that it traps that forms insulation. We've gotta be nice and solid so that when you put the fleece on, they're not curling in next stage. I've got a fleece bag, which is a little bit of Rolls Royce of fleecing. You can't just use the normal role of fleece and use that. Just wrap it around the plant songs. There's no air gaps and tied it off in a similar manner. But as I say, I've spoiled myself and got a fleece bag. Ice toggle tie off like say these are. These are worth a few extra pennies and there you go. That should be winter ready. So just like the critters in the garden I will plants need a helping hand through the winter and one of the ways that we can do this is by applying a mulch. Now you can make your own mulch through compostable garden items such as leaves and branches, shredding them up. But if you do do that, I'd suggest that you give them a good amount of time to rot down so that they're not rotting on top of your plant, because I can actually steal the nitrogen from the soil, which should give you a poor result in the coming spring. On the nursery. We use our own specialist ready made mulch, which is really good and actually can be quite decorative or small, just several advantages, one of them being water. Attention holding back the weeds and obviously it's insulating properties. Now if I was mulching the plant on the nursery, what I'll do first is just apply a small amount of slow release fertilizer beneath the mulch and then just give it a nice generous covering. It's really help give it a bit of a blanket for the winter. So we should see a really good result in the spring. Plants that we predominantly look to mulch are herbaceous perennials that have died back for the winter and what we're doing is we're protecting that RuPaul. So we see really good result in the following spring. Now here's a very blustery winters day and I do hope that you can hear me. Now, one of the things that we do need to talk about is giving wildlife what it needs during the winter months. And this can be as simple as just some twigs and leaves, just to give them the habitat that they need, the facility to make a nest somewhere to hide from predators, other things really important. It's additional food, You know the berries aren't on the trees or the shrubs anymore. So we need to look at putting things like bird feeders down, especially animal feeds. But more importantly, water. Water can be really. Hard for animals to source during the winter months, especially when the grounds frozen. They've got nothing to get at, so just take that time to add a small water source around your garden and you will get a shock of how much additional wildlife you do bring.