Gardeners Calander - January

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General Garden Care

  • Plan for the coming year and order seeds, bare rooted plants and potatoes
  • Dig over vacant areas, removing perennial weeds and incorporating manure or compost.
  • Maintain equipment
  • Feed the garden birds
  • Clear the borders of weeds and leaves
  • Collect fallen leaves for leaf mulch
  • Shred the old Christmas Tree

Vegetables and Herbs

  • Finish winter digging
  • Plan the crop rotation and order seeds and potatoes
  • Harvest - Brussel sprouts, kale, leeks, parsnips, spinach, swedes, turnip, turnip tops, winter greens.
  • Sow indoors - Onions, broad beans, carrot, cauliflower, lettuce, peas, radish, spinach, spring onions, summer cabbages, turnips.
  • Cover cauliflower heads with its own leaves.
  • Start chitting early potatoes to plant out from march.
  • Force Chicory

Perennials

  • Lift and divide herbaceous perennials
  • Take root cuttings from acanthus, japanese anemones, nepeta, oriental poppies, phlox, primula and verbascum.
  • Order herbaceous perennials for delivery in the spring.
  • Remove any stems left for winter interest that are past their best.
  • Clear the borders of weeds and leaves

Annuals and Bedding

  • Sow summer flowering annuals such as antirrhinums, begonias, gazania, lobelias, snapdragons and pelargoniums.
  • Order seed and plug plants online.
  • Sow sweet peas
  • Pot on any autumn sown sweet peas
  • Deadhead winter flowering pansies

Trees and Shrubs

  • Move any trees or shrubs now while dormant
  • Check all ties and stakes
  • Brush off heavy snow from shrubs and hedges to prevent damage
  • Plant bare rooted roses, trees and shrubs
  • Prune trees to shape
  • Remove any suckers growing from the base of trees
  • Hard prune Buddleia (Butterfly bush)
  • Take hardwood cuttings from deciduous shrubs such as dogwoods
  • Cut back overgrown deciduous hedges
  • Plant new bare root deciduous hedge plants

Fruit

  • Mend the fruit cage and protect from heavy snow
  • Apply blood, fish and bone to all fruit near the end of the month
  • Check all ties and stakes
  • Winter prune apples, pears, gooseberries, white currants, red currants, blackcurrants, summer fruiting raspberries, outdoor grape vines.
  • Force strawberries and rhubard.
  • Lift and divide old rhubarb
  • Plant fruit bushes, trees and canes

Under Glass

  • Prune greenhouse vines before the sap starts to rise
  • Check heating and insulation is working properly
  • Scrub down the greenhouse and clean out pots and seed trays
  • Check for pests and diseases
  • Collect and sow cotoneaster and pyracantha seeds

Lawns

  • Avoid walking on frozen grass
  • Try not to walk on any naturalised bulbs as they emerge
  • Spike the lawn to improve drainage
  • Repair any bumps and dips
  • Reshape edges
  • Lay new turf if weather permits

Bulbs

  • Order summer flowering bulbs
  • Bring on new forced bulbs
  • Deadhead forced bulbs as they finish flowering. Feed and remove to a sheltered spot for planting in the garden in spring.
  • Pot up Hippeastrum bulbs
  • Check stored bulbs and tubers for rot

Containers

  • Deadhead winter flowering pansies

Ponds

  • If you have fish and its been frozen for a prolonged period melt a hole in ice to allow oxygen in.

Climbers

  • Prune wisteria, vines, ivies, virginia creeper, boston ivy, climbing hydrangea, and late summer-flowering Clematis