In your garden – January 2022

Hello everyone! We hope you have all had a good Christmas and New year.

For all you enthusiastic gardeners – here are a few jobs you can be doing to help with the boredom and give you a good start to your gardening calendar in 2022.

Lets get started with things for the vegetable garden.

Vegetable Garden

• If you grow runner beans dig a trench where you want to plant, between 12 and 15 inches deep, and 18 inches wide. Fill it with with your old brussel sprout stems or kale or any other brassica stem, lay them in the bottom of the trench and chop them up using a sharp spade. You can also add other uncooked vegetables scraps  to your trench. As the veg waste gets near to the top of the trench cover over with the soil you dug out then leave until you are ready to plant your beans.
• Its not to late to plant Garlic too!
• You can try some early seed sowing in trays, germination temperature needs to be around 13 degrees centigrade, so a nice bright cool windowsill would be ideal. You can try lettuce, Summer cabbage and cauliflower, also round varieties of carrot, spinach too! It’s also a good time to start your broad beans – this is a good one to do with children as the beans are nice and big and easy to see. You can sow these in individual pots or modules.
• If your leeks or other alliums were attacked by leek moth or allium leaf miner, dig the area over so the birds can feed on any over Wintering pests in the soil.
• Also remove and compost dead and yellowing leaves from Winter brassicas as they can encourage fungal diseases and harbour pests.
• You can also sow your Chilli seeds!
• Prune your Apples and Pears now before the sap begins to rise

Flowers

• Sow your Sweetpeas now if you haven’t already, this will ensure a longer flowering period and flowers with longer stems so easier for cutting.
• If you have Winter pansies these can be affected by downy mildew and leaf spot so deadhead regularly and remove diseased leaf on sight.
• If you have Winter hardy cyclamen in containers keep them dead headed regularly as this will help prolong the flowering also look for signs of Botrytis and remove, this is a grey mould which grows in damp conditions.
• Cut down any flowering perennials to ground level things like Phlox, Peonies Japanese Anemones and Geraniums.
• Prune your Rosa Rugosa now.
• Keep on top of annual weeds by hoeing them off.
• It’s a good time to plant bare root roses and ornamental trees as long as the ground isn’t frozen.
• If you had Mistletoe this Christmas you could try pressing the berries in to the bark of your apple trees to grow your own Mistletoe plants!
• Make sure your small alpines aren’t covered in leaves and other wind blown debris.
• If you are over Wintering Dahlia, Begonia and Canna tubers don’t forget to check them for signs of drying out and rot.

Its still very cold outside so don’t forget to feed the birds! 🙂

That’ll do for now. Keep safe and busy look out for my tips in February. Do stop by Thorngrove in January if there’s anything you need, and I’ll be happy to give you more advice too!

– Chris Francis