January 2021
After the tribulations of 2020 we are all entering into 2021 with a mixture of hope and caution. The garden at this time of year perfectly reflects this sometimes contradictory combination. January often has the worst weather of the year and the days are still cripplingly short in this part of the world. But the light is slowly - very slowly - stretching out the days and by the end of the month I can still see to garden at 5pm whereas in the middle of December there is not much light past 4 o clock on a cloudy afternoon.
And all over the garden there are little bursts of joy in the shape of snowdrops, primroses, violets, hellebores, the first irises that we grow in pots, catkins on the hazels and the confetti-tangle of witch hazel flowers.
Birdsong at dawn is gradually getting louder and fuller as the males start to seek out territory and there is a palpable sense of the year flexing its muscles and starting to move away from winter and towards spring. This is not to say that there will be snow, ice, flood, storm and that special dank greyness of a British winter, but there is light on the horizon. There is hope.
Whereas we close up shop for weeks at a time in December, hunkering down and letting the garden coast through the worst of the days, January is filled with renewed purpose. There are jobs to be done. We try and mulch, prune, and plant whenever conditions allow and if they do not then there are seeds to be sown as well as pots to be washed and labels to be scrubbed so they can be recycled. As well as these regular horticultural tasks we also try and get bigger, one-off jobs tackled like laying paths or putting in new stand pipes. This January we are planning to take out some of the blight-stricken box hedges in The Jewel Garden - although that is a job that is very weather-dependant as the excavated hedging must be burnt immediately so as not to spread the infectious fungal spores so it cannot be done in the wet.
Our new greenhouse is now up and a blessing both for the extra housing it offers for winter protection as well as the exciting potential for growing more tender summer crops. I say it is ‘new’ although I bought it a year ago, just before the pandemic struck, when it was very second-hand and had been blown down in a storm. We finally were able to collect it this autumn and gradually pieced it together and assembled it. The result is that we have doubled our greenhouse space - at a fraction of the cost of either of the other two, smaller, greenhouses - and as every garden knows - you can never have too big a greenhouse.
January reading from My Garden World
What to do in the garden this month:
TULIPS
It is not too late to plant tulips - but you really do need to get on with it. Tulips planted now might flower a little later than those planted in November but they will make a perfectly good display. If intending to leave them in the ground plant as deeply as you can - at least 4 inches. But if you just want a good show this year they can be popped an inch or two in the topsoil and will be fine for this spring. When planting in a container make sure that they have good drainage because although they are completely hardy to cold, the biggest enemy is rotting in damp soil. But this is a job to do by the middle of the month at the very latest.
WINTER PRUNING OF FRUIT TREES
This is always my big January job and if nothing else this is something I like to have finished by the end of the month.
Try to understand how something grows before pruning. Does it flower on new or old wood? Does it grow new shoots in a great post flowering burst or do they steadily emerge over the season? Does a fruit tree need to achieve a certain maturity to create spurs that bear fruit or will they be produced in the first year of growth? Does the plant heal well or is it, like cherries and plums, a bleeder - and if so when does it produce least sap? If in doubt about any of this - don’t cut. Wait. You will never do harm by not pruning and patience in a garden is a great virtue.
If you prune an apple tree hard each winter it will make a mass of new growth but no flowers – and therefore no fruit. This cycle is often perpetuated by even harder pruning the following year – to get rid of all that new, fruitless growth, which, having lots of lovely succulent sap, will attract aphids and fungal disease. So through over-zealous and mistimed pruning people often ruin their fruit trees. If you wish to curtail growth you leave the pruning to summer - July is ideal - when the foliage is fully grown and before the roots start to store food for winter. Do not prune plums, apricots, peaches or cherries (these should be pruned in late Spring and only if absolutely necessary).
APPLES AND PEARS
The idea is to produce a tree that has plenty of light and air reaching the centre. I do this by imagining a pigeon flying straight at the tree and pruning it so it can fly right through it from any angle. In principle you are trying to make a goblet-shape or a cupped hand with the fingers making the branches around the empty palm.
Start by removing any crossing or rubbing branches. Cut back any overlong or straggly branches to a bud to promote vigorous multi-stemmed regrowth. Keep standing back and reviewing the shape so that it both looks handsome and retains a strong, open structure.
Always use very sharp secateurs, loppers and saws and never strain - always use an implement that is working well within its capacity. That way you retain control and risk least damage to the tree - and yourself. Traditional advice was to paint any large wounds made by pruning but current thinking is that this does more harm than good as it seals in moisture and disease. By far the best course is to leave a clean cut and let it heal over itself.
TRAINED FRUIT (CORDONS, ESPALIERS, FANS)
You must be counter intuitive with these. Remember that the harder you cut, the stronger the regrowth - so cut back any weak growth in winter to encourage vigorous new shoots in spring. You must then prune again in July to restrict growth.
PRUNING SOFT FRUIT
Cut back autumn fruiting raspberries to the ground, removing all of last year’s canes. Cut away all crossing and inward growing growth from redcurrants and gooseberries to create an open goblet shape. Reduce remaining growth by a third to create a strong framework of branches.
I always take a few cuttings from the pruned material of gooseberries and redcurrants because they strike very easily and it means I can constantly add new, vigorous plants to replace the older ones. Simply select a nice straight shoot and divide it into lengths between 4 & 9 inches (10 & 20cm) long. Cut the top of each section at an angle and the bottom straight so that you remember which way up they should be.
Place the cuttings around the edge of a pot filled with a gritty compost mix, burying them deeply so that only an inch or so is above the surface. Water them and put them in a sheltered place. They will not need any extra heat or protection and will take a few months to show signs of growth - which will be the indication that roots have formed. They will be ready to pot into individual pots by mid summer and to plant out next winter.
MULCHING
The best time to put down a mulch is whenever you get round to do it, because the pros of a good organic mulch - which are weed suppression, moisture retention and improved soil structure and fertility - always outweigh any cons such as suppressing ‘little treasure’ seedlings. However, we do try and mulch all our borders in January because this gives time in autumn for the borders to die back gracefully and allow birds to eat all seeds and berries but is early enough not to suppress the growth of bulbs such as alliums and tulips that start to appear by the end of February. Whenever you mulch the same rules apply: use a well-rotted organic material such as mushroom compost, garden compost or bark chips (we use pine bark on the grass borders for a little extra acidity) and be generous with it. Spread the mulch around all existing plants at least 2 inches thick and twice that is twice as good. In principle the thicker the mulch is, the better it will do its work so it is more effective to mulch half the garden every other year well than all of it annually but inadequately.
ONION SETS AND SEEDS
The advantage of growing onions by seed is that there are so many varieties to choose from. However it is much easier - and more common - to grow them from sets, which are small bulbs. If the ground is dry enough these can be planted now about 9 inches apart in rows with the tips sticking out of the soil. However if it is too wet I suggest planting a batch in plugs in ordinary peat-free compost and protecting them in a greenhouse or cool windowsill where they will establish shoots and roots. Harden them off for at least a week outside before planting out when the soil is dry enough for them.
SOWING CHILLIES
Chillies are always the first seeds that I sow in the New Year. They can be slow to germinate and certainly need some heat, either on a heated bench or on a windowsill above a radiator. Because of this I tend to sow them in seed trays rather than plugs and then transplant them to plugs as soon as the seedlings develop true leaves, potting them on again in March and then to their final terracotta pots in May.
The secret of successful chilli growing - other than plenty of light and heat - is to allow each plant as much time and opportunity to become big and bushy, feeding it weekly with a high nitrogen fertiliser (I use home-made liquid nettle feed) until the first flower buds start to appear in June and then switching to a high potash feed (liquid seaweed or homemade comfrey feed are both ideal) to stimulate as many flowers and subsequent fruits as possible on what by now should be a large plant. Chillies need plenty of water but hate being waterlogged, so use a free-draining compost and never water them after 5pm to avoid the risk of them sitting overnight in soggy compost.
CHOOSE & ORDER SEEDS
Growing from seed is the cheapest way to fill your garden with colour and delicious vegetables and deeply satisfying and New Year is the time to start ordering seeds.
Do not rush this. Check websites and catalogues, draw up wish lists and plan where you are going to plant the seedlings before you make your order. There is no hurry. As long as the seeds are ordered this month it will leave you plenty of time to sow and raise them. There has never been so many opportunities for buying seeds as there are now with a huge range via the internet and mail order catalogues. It is worth spending a little time comparing options and selecting new varieties and you can find organically raised seeds, seeds mass produced, local seeds and seeds from across the world. One word of caution - check how many seeds are supplied per packet - often the best value comes with slightly larger quantities per packet.
GARDEN COMPOST
One of the fall-outs of Christmas is the enormous amount of paper that it generates. But all the wrapping, packaging and cardboard can go on the compost heap. At this time of year there can a shortage of ‘green’ or nitrogen-rich material such as mown grass to leaven the carbon-rich material like cardboard and paper, but it all rots down and will end up as part of the mix over the coming months.
It is important to turn your compost, even in the coldest weather (and it is a good job to warm yourself on a frosty day). Even though we think of the process of turning and making compost as heating it up in fact the important thing to do is to add oxygen and this stimulates bacteria to digest the material, be it kitchen waste or Christmas packaging, which in turn generates heat, even in mid winter. At this time of year I also like to spread a layer of finished compost on any vegetable beds that are not carrying a crop so it can be worked into the soil by worms and weather, ready for sowing and planting in a few months time. Finally a January job is to sieve compost and bag it up ready to add to potting compost ready for the flurry of sowing in spring.
POTTING COMPOST
Many gardeners will have noticed that a self-sown seedling will grow much healthier than one carefully raised under glass and then transplanted to exactly the same part of the border. This is because the seedling starts that complex relationship with the soil from the outset rather than having to establish it after it has been transplanted.
What does this mean for us gardeners?
The first is to take the old-fashioned option where possible and sow seeds into a seed bed, transplanting the seeds with a clump of moist soil around the roots. Another way of achieving the same effect is to sow directly where the plants are to mature. This is not always possible, especially with plants that are tender or slow to grow. The seedlings must be sown and raised in potting compost and then transplanted at a later, suitable date. This is where I think it is worth taking care with the choice of compost.
The first thing is to avoid peat. As a growing medium peat has many virtues. It retains moisture well yet drains freely. It is cheap. But none of this justifies the loss of peat bogs caused by extraction for horticultural use. We are using peat at around 200 times the speed that it can reform and over 95% of British peat bogs, which are essential for a whole range of birds and plants, have been lost this century. It cannot ever be justified.
Composted bark works very well in most cases. Composted bracken makes an excellent ericaceous alternative, as does composted pine needles. All three are widely available. No potting compost can match the complexity and range of micro organisms in the soil that are essential to long-term plant health.
But you can try and make your potting compost as good as possible by mixing in extra goodness and improving the drainage and ease of root development. I start with a measure of my own garden soil. This should always come from your own garden as it will have its own specific ecosystem. Also keep a supply of well-sieved garden compost in a bag and add a shovel or two to each mix. Finally invest in some bags of horticultural grit and add this liberally to ensure good drainage and a free root-run from the growing plants.
There will be a few weeds that appear but they are very easy to remove. Most importantly your plants will be healthy and specifically adapted for your soil from the first day. It is important to always use fresh potting compost for every new planting as even though used compost might look perfectly good, most if not all of the nutrients will have been used up. Recycle the used compost by spreading it on a border or your compost heap.
