Recycle your tree outdoors for wildlife to use

After Christmas, your live cut tree can be moved outside and be redecorated for the birds. Anchor the tree in a bucket full of damp sand. Put on strings of popcorn and cranberries. Apples, oranges, leftover breads and pine cones covered with peanut butter then dipped in birdseed can also be added. For best results, push the edible ornaments well into the tree so that they do not blow off as readily.

• 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 during extended warm and dry weather. Recent rainy weather has likely been sufficient.

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

• Inspect squash, potatoes, root crops, and other vegetables and fruits that 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 conditions too cold or damp.

Eventually there will be more typical winter temperatures here and vegetables stored in an unheated garage will likely freeze in the very cold winter weather and should be moved to the basement and kept as cool as possible.

Throw away or compost anything that has spoiled or has soft spots. The same goes for summer flower bulbs like dahlias and gladioli that you saved to plant next spring.

• 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 of 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 and 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, then it is important to use a stabilizer that is made to eliminate corrosion associated with alcohol fuels.

• Be sure that you have moved any liquid pesticides that will freeze out of an unheated garage that can freeze during the winter. Sprayers should be empty if stored in an unheated garage.

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