Banish the winter blues by preparing for spring

You can prune fruit trees any time it’s warm enough to be outdoors. Pruning needs to be done when the trees are dormant to control size and encourage fruit blossoms.

Doing it now means I have to wade through nearly three feet of snow to my miniature apple orchard. I’m burning a lot of calories and pounds. I already saw a five-pound drop on the scales this morning from two pruning sessions.

That’s enough to banish the blues, for me!

Wading through three-feet-deep snow to prune is a great calorie-burner!

While you prune, scatter the clippings on the ground or snow away from the trees. Rabbits and other pests will eat these and leave the trees alone. 

Grapevines should be pruned during the cold months, too. Cut them back heavily, pruning to the darker, rusty-brown wood to encourage new growth. Grape clusters form on new growth. Don’t worry if a sap drips from the cuts. It’s only water and won’t hurt anything.

See the Almanac's winter pruning guide.

While you’re out there in the snow, take a broom and gently brush off any accumulated snow from trees and shrubs. Young branches can easily break from the snow’s weight. The yew hedge in front of my house was half-buried from the last blizzard and required serious sweeping.

After I got the sidewalk shoveled after the last blizzard, sweeping snow off the hedge was the next job.  This much snow can break young branches.

Another housekeeping task that can be done on any day you feel like braving the weather is spreading fireplace ashes around lilac bushes and fruit trees. Scatter the ashes around the base of the trees and bushes, on top of the snow, in about a three-foot-diameter circle. As the snow melts and the ground thaws, minerals and other nutrients in wood ash will percolate down to root systems. Any hard wood that is burned in a fireplace supplies numerous trace elements, calcium, zinc, copper and other minerals that fruit trees crave.

Images of spring! Wood ash helps to sweeten the soil around lilacs, which bloom more lavishly in alkaline ground.

Start feeding houseplants again in mid to late February, depending on your latitude. Southern ones, start fertilizing on Valentine’s Day; northern zones, resume feeding at the end of the month. As the sun becomes stronger and days lengthen, plants begin to grow again and need nutrition.

Tell us what you do to banish the winter blues, such as any small jobs you do to help your garden during winter.