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Hi I am David Epstein welcome to Growing Wisdom. Today we are going to talking about putting your perennials to bed for the winter and in the fall and early winter a lot of perennials across much of the country get neap by froze and freeze. So you want to cut them back to the ground so things like hostess obviously this has been by a neap hard freeze hostess you can really get right down to the ground and you just want to get rid of everything as far down as you can get.

This step really almost turns to mush it is great in the compose but I do not leave it on the ground because what I have found is that little critters like to make nest in there. If you can see how tight, I got this all the way to the ground and that is basically ready for winter. You do not want to be afraid when you are cutting them back. You know here I have got some chrysanthemums such of really been expectacular this fall.

But now they are done and I want to cut this back you go right down to the base you cut them as close to the ground as you can get. And you may even notice a little bit new green growth coming up close to the base of the plant. That is actually some of the growth which may make it through the entire winter and will start to plant up again to the next spring.

So, do not worry about that but you want to cut the stock all the way down and you will do this with whether its Chrysanthemum or whether Agastache whether its some of you other plants like Echinacea just cut them right back to the ground. You might have some plants a little bit more tender in the garden like headers and heats you know were are zone five, six around here.

So, I want to cover this with hay this shredded hay and you are basically just going to cover the sky up right at the base. And it is a little bit expose at the top it is okay but you want to do is prevent that freezing and dying from going on to the ground to much. The hay will protect the ground the cold would not go as deep and the plant will be harmed if we get a very severe weather.

You do not want to do this too early in the season because actually things like mice involves will used the hay in order to make their nest. So you really want to wait until the ground is frozen and begun to freeze up before you start doing this. Come back every week for all of our videos here at growingwisdom.com.

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