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Winter snow and ice can damage your plants

When it snows, carefully shake snow off plants during heavy, wet storms to minimize damage. Once the snow or ice has frozen on, it is best to let it melt off. Removing frozen snow or ice from plants can cause considerable damage. Try to avoid piling up snow at the base of plants when shoveling by more evenly spreading the snow around as you shovel.

• If you have a home greenhouse, it is a good idea to clear it out and wash all of the pots, trays and benches. Cleaning your greenhouse thoroughly will reduce pest problems next year. Wash the windows inside and out to allow maximum light in if you are planning to grow plants over the winter. Scrub benches, fixtures and glazing bars with a disinfectant, such as one part bleach to nine parts water, to help reduce disease problems. Be sure to thoroughly hose off all surfaces when finished scrubbing.

• Clean crusty clay pots by adding one cup each of white vinegar and household bleach to a gallon of warm water and soak the pots. If the pots are very dirty, then scrub with a steel wool pad after soaking for 12 hours or so to loosen up the grime.

• Buckthorn is an invasive plant in northern Illinois and difficult to eradicate and chokes out native as well as ornamental plants. You can continue to cut this plant down in winter. Be sure to treat the stumps with an herbicide to kill the root system. If the buckthorn is just cut to the ground and not treated with an herbicide or ground out, it will come back next season as a multi-stemmed shrub. It is best to wait until the ground freezes or dries out if your site is wet from all the recent rainfall before working in the garden or wooded area.

• Tim Johnson is director of horticulture at Chicago Botanic Garden, chicagobotanic.org.

Cleaning your greenhouse thoroughly in the off season will reduce pest problems next spring. Courtesy of Chicago Botanic Garden
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