Gardening Month by Month: January

January in the Garden

As I'm sitting writing this article, the New Year is still over two months away, but by the time you read this, turkeys will be looking worried and the New Year will be a few days away (or a few days ago depending on how busy your festive season was!).

Out in the garden winter will be in full swing and the number of days you can get outside to work will be limited to some extent by the weather, especially if you've got a heavy clay soil that can't be walked on during the wet, cold months before spring.

Sowing

If you are planning on growing runner beans later in the season, you might want to dig a bean trench. This is simply a trench 12" (30cm) deep where you plan to place the beans. This trench can then be filled with kitchen vegetable scraps, Christmas orange peel, compost from your back garden compost bin (even if it is not fully rotted down yet) and any other organic waste you can acquire. You can keep adding new material right up until the spring, at which point you can cover it over with the removed soil and then plant the beans. The organic material will not only provide nutrients to the beans as it rots down but will also help retain moisture during the drier summer months, which will cut down on the watering demands for the beans, especially on lighter soils.

Planting Out

Folk who didn't get bare-rooted fruit trees in last month can still plant them now. You can also cut red and white currant bushes back to a single bud and plant raspberries, blackberries and other cane fruits if the ground is not heavily frozen. Getting soft and top fruit sorted out now will be repaid many times over in the summer when they provide their delicious low maintenance crops. Another low maintenance dessert crop that will respond to a bit of attention now is rhubarb. You can force an early crop by lifting a dormant rhubarb crown, leaving it on the soil surface for a few days to allow frosts to get to it and then pot it up in a mixture of soil and compost and bring it indoors. The pot should be covered by a bucket, plastic rubbish bin or large pot with the drainage holes covered over. The warmth indoors after the frosts outside will start the rhubarb into growth but the lack of light will ‘force' the stalks, which can be harvested when they are about a foot long (in about 12 weeks, so some time around March).

If you don't have space indoors (or in a greenhouse/polytunnel) for this, you can force outside by lifting the rhubarb plants to expose them to the frost and then replanting them and covering them with a bin filled with straw or manure to help build the heat up. Once you've harvested the forced stalks you should leave this rhubarb plant uncut for the rest of the season to recover and then pick a different plant next year. The plants will also appreciate a good mulch of compost or well-rotted manure later in the spring to help feed them up after the stress of an early crop (not to mention to keep the early weeds down until the large shading rhubarb leaves cover the bed and exclude light from anything else).

Harvesting

If you're not fed up with brussel sprouts after Christmas, you should still be able to get some off the plot.

The Jerusalem artichokes should still also be OK to lift if you've not eaten them all already! Remember to leave a few in the ground to grow into this year's crop - they are perennials so you can grow them in the same place for many years.

Pull up leeks from the ground as you need them. They don't keep for more than a week in the fridge so it is best to leave them if you don't need them immediately. Leeks are incredibly hardy so won't suffer from frosts or snow.

The last of the swedes and turnips can be lifted this month - handy for stews.

Spinach and spinach beet may still be going strong - just keep picking the leaves.

Other Jobs

Finally, you can try to keep one step ahead of the slugs and snails now before they start breeding in earnest. Look under stones, mulching material, wood-piles, bed edges and cracks or crevices. Collect any you find into a bucket of boiling water, or just stamp on them or cut them in half if you're that way inclined! The dead slugs can go on the compost heap - you might also want to check round the bin for slugs and snails holed up there. Whilst some folk view them as part of the composting process, a large number will breed and then the offspring move off in the spring to the rest of your plot. Also look out for the slug eggs - these are small white spheres that lay just on or under the surface. They should also be destroyed - each one turns into a new pest which will lay about another 500-800 eggs during its life.

Jim'll

photos (c) Gary Barlow 2008