Winterize Your Garden Hose and Other Tips to Ready Your Garden for Winter

In the Northeast, the first frost has already bitten some areas, while temps in others are dipping into the low 40s on most nights. If you haven’t winterized your garden hose and prepared your garden for the winter, now is the time to do it. These tips can help you put together a checklist of chores to preserve your gardening tools, store your garden hose and prepare your garden to winter over in peace.

Clean Up the Garden

Pull up all annual flowers, vegetables and tender herbs and dispose of them properly. Don’t leave dead stalks standing in the garden. They provide perfect cover for insect larvae and other microbes that can cause diseases and harm next year’s crop.

Trim back perennials or cut them back to ground level and compost the tops. Save the seed heads for next year if you want them.

Mow the lawn and do routine maintenance on your lawn mower. Use your garden hose to wash the undercarriage clean so that the grass clippings and dirt don’t cause rust or corrosion.

Winterize Plants

If there are tender plants that you intend to leave outdoors for the winter, protect them with a cold frame or with a glass cloche. You can build your own cold frame with an old window and some two-by-fours. Just stack the two-by-fours or bricks around the plants and lay the window frame over the top.

Wrap sturdier plants in burlap to protect the tender branches from heavy snow and ice.

Winterize Your Garden Hose and Equipment

On a warm day, clean the outside and inside of terra cotta, clay and concrete ornaments, bird baths, pools and baths. Use your garden hose to wash them clean and place them in the sun to dry thoroughly.

Drain your garden hose by stretching it out to full length with one end pointed downhill. If you don’t have a sloping area on which to drain it, stretch your hose to full length on the ground. Pick up one end and put it over your shoulder. Walk the full length of the hose, picking it up and threading it over your shoulder to push the water in it toward the far end. Repeat at least once to make sure that you’ve fully drained the garden hose. Coil it carefully and wind it onto a garden hose reel to store indoors.

If you’ll need a hose for watering chores during the winter, consider investing in a heated garden hose. A heated garden hose has an electric warmer at the end that prevents water from freezing and plugging it up.

Before you put your garden hose away for the winter, examine its full length for signs of wear, cracking or decay. The end of the season is the ideal time to replace a worn garden hose with a new one. Most gardening stores and home improvement stores will have all types of hoses on sale. If you’ve been considering a replacement or upgrade to your current garden hose, this is a great time to get a good bargain on a ½ inch garden hose, a ¾ inch garden hose, a drinking safe garden hose or a coil garden hose. Take advantage of the end of season sales to stock up on gardening equipment and a new garden hose for the spring.