Christmas Gardening – January Garden Tasks

This is the time to make sure you’ve pinched out the tips of seedlings raised from autumn sowings to encourage side-shoots to form and make bushy plants. Check plants like sweet peas because it’s always easy to overlook a couple and they will now look spindlier than their pinched out neighbours.

This is the time to start planting bare-rooted roses – remember that you should try not to plant new roses where old ones have been removed, unless the soil has been dug out and replaced with a rich new material because roses are so prone to soil-transmitted diseases.

Be ready to brush snow from evergreen shrubs and conifers, as it can weigh down and damage their branches. Similarly, use a light rake or broom to push snow away from anywhere you are expecting aconites to flower – they will happily push their way through it but if it’s several inches tall they grow that much higher to compensate and then the flowers tend to fall over when the snow melts.

Dig over any bare kitchen garden areas, forking in plenty of compost or rotted manure.

Prepare a bean trench on the site where you're planning to grow your runner beans next summer. Take out a deep trench and fill with the contents of your compost bin. Continue adding kitchen waste right up until late spring, then sow or plant out your beans on top.

Check bulbs, corms and tubers in store for signs of rot or deterioration. Remove diseased ones and sprinkle others with sulphur powder to prevent disease attack.

Christmas gardening snow bush photograph by mike@bensalem, used under a creative commons attribution licence