Gardening

can safely be left until spring?

Build a priority list. Consider:

— Giving your yard at least one last soaking before reeling up the hoses for winter.

— Planting a cover crop and adding new perennials including bulbs, trees and shrubs at a time when fall moisture can help establish their root systems.

— Removing ailing plants to help with disease control during the upcoming planting season.

— Not disturbing bare soil where many wild bee species, including bumblebees, overwinter in small nests. “Many of our ground-nesting species will not be bothered by a general cleanup, but I will tell you that I had bumblebees working my late-blooming coral bells up until frost,” Finneran said.

— Delaying tilling. Put nature to work through winter with earthworms.

— Postponing pulling up your summer annuals and chrysanthemums until spring. They’ll trap whatever leaves blow by, creating their own enriching mulch while shielding insects.

“What I tell people concerned about how things might look is just clean up in the front yard and let things go in the back,” Landau said. “Remove any layers of material from the garden that might have fungus in it. But if it’s simply dead, leave it alone.”

Brush piles are great wintertime protection for a variety of wildlife species, and the more you can leave them untouched, the better, she said. “Otherwise, you might unearth or squash insect larvae.

“Leave at least a little corner of the property intact,” Landau said. “Any little bit will help since you have insects living in your garden the year-round.”

Online: For more about caring for pollinators, see this brochure from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations: www.fao.org/fao-stories/article/en/c/1127922/

You can contact Dean Fosdick at deanfosdick@ netscape.net