Henny Penny Farmette

Falling leaves, shorter days, and colder weather signal that winter is around the corner. With roughly a month left before winter officially begins, there are plenty of tasks for the home gardener. Don’t put away your boots, buckets, gloves, trowel, and spade just yet.

After the grape harvest, the leaves change from green to gold or brown and become dry

If you grow grapes and raspberries or blackberries, now would be the time to prune those back before mulching with compost, leaves, or sawdust. Composting suppresses weed growth.

Pick and pumpkins, apples, and winter squash. Store them in a dry area at temperature of about 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

This young rhubarb flourishes in rich soil and some protection from intense, direct sun

Rhubarb plants can be divided now. Make sure there’s an eye on each new plant and tuck into rich soil and mulch.

This candy-stripe rose requires a good pruning in the fall to generate a large bush with beautiful blooms in the spring

Remove leaves and prune back roses to 12 to 18 inches. Add some bone meal to the base of the bush and work into the soil.

Plant bulbs that will flower in the spring such as daffodils, tulips, hyacinth, crocus, and scillas.

Prepare a bed for onion seedlings or sets and plant them now for spring harvesting.

Plant red, yellow, or white onions in the fall for spring harvesting

Fill bird feeders, hang a warming light in your hen house for the freezing nights ahead, and put blankets around your bee hives.

Transfer potted mums into garden soil. Most are perennials and will return year after year.

Plant kale, ornamental cabbage, and winter-hardy plants such as pansies in the garden or window boxes for winter color.

Move cold-sensitive houseplants indoors.

Narcissus jonquilla are picture-pretty and smell divine

If spring hasn’t arrived in your corner of the world, be of good cheer. You can effectively bring spring indoors by forcing bulbs to open or branches of spring-flowering trees to bloom in your home.

Trees that bloom in the spring need to have sufficient chilling hours before they break their dormancy, so it’s advisable to try forcing blooms during the months of January and February rather than in December.

Choose half-inch branches  of golden forsythia, pussy willow, coral quince, or almost any fruit tree. Using sharp pruning shears or a knife, cut diagonally above a bud so that you have two- or three-feet long branches to force into bloom.

After bringing the branches indoors, you’ll want to cut slits into the bottom of the branches to ensure water is more easily absorbed. Put the branches in a container of water. Every other day, trim the stems and change the water. Bring in new branches every few days to ensure continuous blooms.

Nothing beats the paper-white narcissus or buttery yellow daffodil for brightening a kitchen on a dreary winter’s day. Choose healthy a bulb (or bulbs) free of bruising, cuts, of infection. In a bowl, glass, or saucer, place glass marbles or pebbles. Add water.

Position the bulb or bulbs securely so that the roots can grow down into the water, but the bulb remains out of the water sitting on top of the marbles or pebbles. Ensure that the water level beneath the bulb remains constant and add more water as necessary.

Paper-white narcissus, purple hyacinth, and certain daffodils add not only spring color to an indoor environment but also a lovely sweet scent wherever they are placed.