In the fall you prepare your lawn for winter dormancy with fertilizers, overseeding, aeration, and other treatments, in addition to providing care for your landscaping and vegetation to remove old growth. However, your yard trees need some similar types of care and maintenance to help them make it through winter and emerge healthy in the spring as they begin to grow again. Here are some recommendations to help you care for and manage your tree's and their health for this winter and into spring.
Feed Your Trees
In the fall your trees will need an application of fertilizer to help their roots grow and strengthen over the fall and winter so they can emerge in the spring with new growth. By applying a fall fertilizer based on your tree's needs, you will protect it from disease and stress and also give it a head start for spring's new growth in the leaves and branches.
However, be sure you apply the right type of fertilizer that your trees need. Trees growing in a yard don't have the natural fertilizers they would normally get from twigs, branches, leaves, and other organic matter that sits upon the soil and decomposes to add elements back into the soil. So, to check your trees' specific nutrient needs, your landscape tree professional can test the soil or you can arrange for your local extension office to complete the soil test.
This soil test will determine exactly what nutrients your trees will need and how much they need because more fertilizer of one type is not necessarily a good thing. Too much of one type of nutrient can harm your tree instead of doing the good you intend for it to do.
Mulch Around the Trees
A great way to help insulate the soil around your tree's roots for the winter is by applying a layer of soil mulch. To give your tree the full protection that it would receive if it were growing in a natural environment would be to apply several inches of wood chipping or bark chips over the soil all the way out as far as the branches extend out. The roots of the tree will extend to this point and often beyond, so this layer of surface mulch will protect the roots from freezing and also hold in moisture and add nutrients back to the soil as the mulch decomposes.
If you do not want to cover the entire area with mulch because you already have an established lawn, it is a good compromise to add in mulch around a three foot area around the tree's trunk. Keep the mulch at a depth of at least a couple inches to provide good insulation to the tree's roots.
Do these steps along with the help of your local tree maintenance services to keep your trees healthy through the winter.
