A New Year For The Garden
It’s the start of a new year and the start of the gardening season
It’s time to plan your planting and how you want your garden to look over the coming months, stock up on seeds and service any essential equipment such as lawn mowers and tools.
It’s also a time for New Year’s resolutions and here are 12 – one a month – that will make your garden super diverse and environmentally friendly:
• Use less plastic
• Plant a tree
• Start sowing seeds
• Plant something for fun
• Grow more veg
• Go green and have a go at organic growing
• Learn to relax and enjoy your garden
• Be more water aware
• Compost more of your garden waste
• Welcome wildlife
• Bring the outside in with houseplants
• Look after your tools
First on the list is using less plastic, something we are all trying to do so it makes sense that we try to make our gardens as plastic free as possible. The biggest ‘bad boy’ in any gardener’s life is the plastic pot. But there are non-plastic alternatives such as biodegradable pots made using materials like coir, wood chips, bamboo and rice husks.
You can also make your own pots using newspaper or toilet roll tubes. And now is a good time to make your own supplies of biodegradable pots so you have stock for the planting season.
Taking good care of existing plastic is a good way to ensure you don’t have to keep buying it – so reuse any plant pots you have.
The added bonus of recycling or reusing items in the garden is that it also reduces cost – as does growing from seed. Even in winter you can grow something from seed, you just need a seed tray and a window ledge, or small cold frame or greenhouse – whatever space and budgets allow.
For anyone growing their own veg, this month is great for sowing onions. If you sow onions now it saves the expense of buying onion sets (small bulbs) later and you can have a much larger crop of onions in the summer. Onions seeds do not have a long shelf life, so it’s best to buy new seeds each year. Seeds will germinate between 16-21˚C one or two weeks after sowing. When large enough to handle, transplant to individual small pots and keep in a bright, frost-free place until April when they can be planted out.
Often the coldest month in the garden, there are still some things you can be doing to keep busy. As the RHS says, January might be the middle of winter but as the days lengthen the garden starts to grow. Now is a great time to plan for the coming gardening year and to order seeds and plants. Enjoy the fresh air on dry sunny days and check your winter protection, stakes, ties and supports are still working after any severe weather.
Also put out food for birds and leave some garden areas uncut, a little longer, to provide shelter for wildlife in your garden. Top three jobs this month – clean pots and greenhouses ready for spring, dig over empty or unused plots and prune apple and pear trees.
