Repurpose your Christmas tree

After Christmas, move your live cut tree outside and redecorate it for the birds.

Anchor the tree in a bucket full of damp sand. Add strings of popcorn and cranberries. Apples, oranges, leftover bread and pine cones covered with peanut butter and dipped in birdseed can also be added.

For best results, push the edible ornaments well into the tree so they do not blow off as readily.

• There are two approaches to managing the fuel left in four- and two-cycle engines. One option is to drain the fuel out of the gas tank and run the engine to get all the fuel out of the fuel lines and carburetor.

Fuel that sits for a long period of time ages and residues can form that may plug the small fuel jets in the carburetor. Removing the gasoline eliminates this problem.

The other option is to fill the tank and add a gas stabilizer into the gas tank and run the engine to get the treated gas into the carburetor. If you are using a gas that has ethanol in it, use a stabilizer that is made to eliminate corrosion associated with alcohol fuels.

• Move any liquid pesticides out of an unheated garage where they can freeze during the winter. Sprayers should be empty if stored in an unheated garage, as any water in the valves can freeze and break the seals.

• Inspect potatoes you have in winter storage. Although conditions may have been ideal when you harvested and stored them in the fall, winter weather may have made it too cold or damp. Eventually there will be more typical winter temperatures here and potatoes stored in an unheated garage will likely freeze solid and be ruined.

Move them to the basement and keep them as cool as possible. Throw away or compost anything that has spoiled or has soft spots.

• Water any evergreen shrubs planted in containers for the winter during any warm and dry periods. It is easy to forget about these plants that can suffer stress during extended warm and dry periods.

Evergreens continue to lose water through their leaves, so providing supplemental water during winter will help prevent winter burn of the leaves. Boxwoods tend to be more challenging to get to survive past early spring when planted in a container for the winter. Winter burn of the foliage tends to start as the weather warms up on a consistent basis in spring.

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