I’ve seen quite a bit of info on social media suggesting we don’t clean up our gardens in the fall but wait till spring instead as a way to help insects. How does this help the insects? KY

There has been quite a bit of talk in the last few years about leaving your plant debris in place until spring to help overwintering insects. This advice kind of flies in the face of many a gardener whose final outdoor chore is usually to clean up all the dead stalks a debris in the garden. But there are good reasons to leave it alone until spring.

While many of us are familiar with the migration of the monarch butterfly, this migratory behavior is the exception rather than the norm in the insect world because the majority of insects overwinter right here in one form or another.

For example, butterflies and moths such as the fritillaries, luna moth, and swallowtails overwinter in chrysalids as they blend in with leaves and dead stalks in the garden. Fireflies and native bees (including bumble bees) like to hide in leaf litter or even burrow a couple of inches down under the leaves to find a nice place to call home until spring. Some bees consider hollow stems of dead plants a great place to spend the winter.

Leaving your brown flowering plants until spring can also provide seed heads that can be used by an assortment of birds for food such as goldfinches, nuthatches, chickadees, cardinals, and sparrows.

So, to help encourage these natural habitats and food sources, the first thing you will need to do is to postpone that impulse to clean up the garden until we’ve had a few days above 50 degrees in the spring. You don’t need to cut down and dispose of those flower stalks that have seen better days. And you don’t need to rake up all the leaves in your flower garden until spring.

As you leave the leaves over the winter in your flower garden, they will not only be available to become a home for overwintering insects, but they will also help retain moisture for your plants. In addition, as they decay over the winter, they will be breaking down and, on the road, to adding more organic matter and essential nutrients back to the soil.

If you want to go “all in” in helping encourage overwintering insects, you could leave the leaves on your lawn throughout the winter. However, this will be a harder sell for those who take pride in their lawn turf. As a compromise, maybe leave the leaves in your flower garden while mowing the leaves into your turf with a mulching mower. Doing this will help add nutrients and organic matter back into the soil and who wouldn’t like that? Good luck.

You can get answers to all your gardening questions by calling the Tulsa Master Gardeners Help Line at 918-746-3701, dropping by our Diagnostic Center at 4116 E. 15th Street, or by emailing us at mg@tulsamastergardeners.org. Photo: Swallowtail chrysalis - Whitney Cranshaw, Colorado State University, Bugwood.org