Protecting your berries for the winter is an essential task if you want to save your plants for the next season. Although berries can tolerate the cold, a harsh winter could freeze your plants depending on where you live.
Luckily, there are plenty of tips for keeping your berries alive and thriving throughout the winter season. Here are the best tips for protecting your berries in winter.
Make Sure To Keep Them Well Insulated
To allow your plants to survive through the winter, make sure to insulate them so that you don’t expose them to excessive amounts of cold air. If you plan on keeping your plants in pots, then wrap them with multiple layers of burlap to insulate them. Additionally, you’ll want to add between four and eight inches of straw or mulch inside your pots, but don’t pack them too tightly because this could rot your plant stems.
Keep Your Plants Trimmed and Hydrated
Although your berry shrubs won’t require too much moisture during winter, you still need to provide them with minimal amounts of water. Check on your pots once a month to ensure the soil doesn’t dry out.
However, if there is snow on your plants, then they already have enough moisture. Furthermore, you can skip your monthly watering if you feel wet soil that’s deeper than one inch.
Also, be sure to get rid of any dead or damaged stems so that they don’t take up prime real estate in your pots. You can do this with clean pruners when your plants are dormant.
Move Them Indoors
Unless you live in a warm climate, you’ll want to move your plants indoors so that they don’t freeze over. Take your plants out of the soil and place them in pots, then move them indoors and put them alongside each other on a wall so that they retain warmth.
Some berry shrubs love the cold (though not extreme cold), so you can place these pots in an unheated area, such as a shed, greenhouse, or garage. Then, when it comes time to harvest, you can use
pulp berry baskets to store this season’s offerings.
Overall, berry plants can live all year, but you need to use extra caution with them during winter. Now that you know some of the best tips for protecting your berries in winter, you can care for yours throughout all four seasons.
