GardenAdvice Gardening Calendar for January 2019
January is a great time to start to create a few projects to create some summer colour in your garden
Dahlias – pot up a few tubers in a 100 mm pots and water keep in a warm place then when the shoots start to show place them inside in a summer position then plant out in the spring – if the springs late and they start to produce lots of growth this can be used for stem cuttings producing more plants. A great plant for summer colour.
Sun Flowers – start a few seeds in pots now inside on a windowsill ready to plant out in the spring – a great project for children. When the flowers have finished they can be cut and hung to dry as wildbird food to feed your garden birds in the winter.
Cosmos and Pyrethrum – sowing a few seeds on a windowsill now will produce plant that can be planted out in the spring to produce some summer flowers.
Skimmia Japonica – At this time of year one of the easiest plants to take stem cutting from placing the cuttings on a windowsill in 75 mm pots the cutting will root in 10 to 20 days and start to grow away to
Sweet peas – starting a few sweet peas seeds in small pots will produce some great summer colour. Sweet pea seeds have a very hard coat so lightly scratching to break the seed coating them will help the seeds to germinate.
For further ideas on creating summer colour in your garden visit the GardenAdvice.co.uk web site.
As spring get nearer its the last change you will have to winter wash your fruit trees and bushed
Its a great way to make sure they get of to a great start in the spring as winter washing is a great way to help remove all the overwintering pests and disease than hide out on your plants over the winter under the bark or in cracks at stem joints etc
Another job in the garden at this time of year often overlooked is to feed your flower borders gardeners spend hours applying mulch to the soil in the flower borders but very few feed the borders. A simple dressing of a basic fertilizer such as Growmore will help achieve better flowers. In also offsets the effect of the soil bacteria using all the available nutrients in the soil trying to break down the mulch. So the message is feed and mulch. Feed for better flowers and mulch for weed control and water retention.
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