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Natural materials make easy, beautiful holiday displays

Now is a good time to prepare your garden for winter and set up seasonal displays.

Start by removing frozen plants from containers and hanging baskets, replacing them with fresh evergreen boughs, branches with colorful berries, and interesting seed heads from perennials and ornamental grasses.

If your garden doesn’t include these materials, garden centers will have lots of options to brighten up your containers. Simply push ends of the stems into the growing medium in the container to support the branches — try to do this before a hard freeze makes it impossible. The current weather forecast suggests a continued warm trend, meaning frozen container media is unlikely to be a concern in the near future.

Remember that any soilless mix from window boxes or containers can be discarded, mixed in a compost pile, blended into a garden bed or kept aside for one more year. If the growing medium is used for a second year, mix equal parts of the old mix with fresh soilless mix next year. Avoid reusing medium in containers that had any problems with disease.

Test your soil

Now is also a good time to consider a soil test to better understand your garden’s needs, such as which fertilizers to use. You can start by making a composite sample from a few areas in the bed and send it in for testing. You can find more information about soil testing through the University of Illinois Extension website. If your garden is large, then it is a good idea to break the garden into zones to test. Soils in the Chicago area tend to have adequate phosphorus levels so in these situations choose fertilizers that do not have phosphorus in them or very small amounts. A soil test will confirm the status of your garden soil.

Terra cotta care

Another garden responsibility is to think about proper storage for terra cotta containers to protect them from being damaged.

When plants in these containers are finished for the year, dump out the growing medium and store the pots in a garage or shed so they are out of the rain. These containers absorb water, and the freeze-thaw cycles of winter can crack them if they are left outside. If you need to leave them outside over winter, then elevate them above the ground, store them upside down, and cover with a tarp to keep the pots as dry as possible.

Prep for bulbs in pots

Bulbs like daffodils, hyacinths, tulips and crocuses are ideal for forcing in pots, whether in a greenhouse or at home.

They require six to 10 weeks of chilling at 40 degrees Fahrenheit or below to complete their dormant period. Plant the bulbs in pots in the fall and leave them in a cold location before bringing them indoors to bloom. You can place the pots in a cold frame outdoors, buried underground and mulch to protect them. Do not allow the pots to dry out.

Before bringing them indoors, gradually acclimatize them to inside conditions, keeping them at 50 to 60 degrees for a few days.

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

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