Gardening tasks to undertake over winter

It is important to continue to monitor your garden for damage from animals and install barriers as needed to prevent further damage. It is easy to forget about the garden in the winter, but animals can continue causing damage.

As snow piles up, rabbits can reach higher into shrubs to feed. Repellents can be applied when temperatures are above 40 degrees Fahrenheit for a few hours. You may need to reapply once every month, more often if temperatures are warm and there is lots of rain.

• It is a good idea to check on the seeds you have saved and stored from last year's garden. Discard anything that is damp, diseased or moldy and then determine what you need to order for the coming year.

Order plants and seeds now to help ensure the availability of the plant varieties that you would like to purchase. Consider varieties that are pest and disease resistant to minimize future problems in the garden.

• Paperwhite narcissus will likely require a cage or a ring of raffia tied around them to keep them from flopping over as they grow. If purchased as bulbs, you can grow them in a shallow dish, or a vase filled with pebbles, rather than soil.

Put about 2 inches of pebbles in the bottom of a small vase or about 4 inches in a large vase. Arrange the bulbs close together and cover them with pebbles, with just their tips exposed. The weight of the pebbles helps to keep them from falling to the side as they grow.

Finally, add water until the level reaches just below the base of the bulbs but no higher (if the bases of the bulbs sit in water, they will rot). Discard the bulbs after flowering, but rinse and keep the pebbles for future forced bulbs.

• Winter is a good time for garden planning. Consult your notes on seed and plant purchases, past garden successes and failures, and garden maps as you begin to plan garden improvements for the coming year.

Do not let the pretty catalog pictures push you into buying things that may not work in your garden. Choosing the right plant for the conditions in your garden and that meet your design goals is very important.

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