One of the best looks that a landscape can have is a snow cover that makes our home look like a winter wonderland. Snow can be a landscapes best friend by covering the lawn, shrubs, and planting beds with a white blanket. Snow cover is a great insulator keeping very cold temperatures from harming those snow covered plants. Wet snow, on the other hand, can cause harm to your evergreen trees and shrubs by you going out with a broom or leaf rake and trying to beat the wet snow off. Wet snow can cause plants to bend but very seldom break. If you wish to remove snow from your evergreens, lightly bat the snow covered branches from their underside. This will keep your motion and snow weight from breaking any branches.

To melt snow and ice from your concrete and blacktop surfaces, use products that won’t damage the surfaces or contaminate the soil in the surrounding planting beds and lawn. The salt free Hailite is a safe product as well as any granular fertilizer high in nitrogen i.e. 10-10-10. Make sure the fertilizer has a course filler and not lightweight vermiculite.

Final snow note: If you have a gas powered snow blower, drain the old gasoline before putting in new.

Limit foot traffic on your lawn when a coating of frost is present. Wait until the sun melts away the white coating to resume foot traffic.

Winter or dormant seeding of grass seed can be successfully done by applying grass seed to the bare and weak areas of the lawn sometime during the months of January or February. Remove any fallen leaves or other debris that would keep the new seed from making good seed to soil contact. That’s the only work on your end. Just spread the seed and wait till the soil warms in early spring for germination. Buy the grass seed now so you have it on hand. Do not put any grass seed down on the lawn when snow covered you want to see where you’re putting the seed.

Store any firewood away from any structure and keep covered with a plastic tarp so it remains dry for your use.

Leave any spring flowering bulbs alone if some start to grow before spring. You’ll be tempted to cover. But please don’t. They will be fine.

One more note: The days get longer starting in January. Can spring be far behind?