A nice warm bed of soil
Edibles
Get a head-start on spring by warming up soil with cold frames, easily made out of old windows, or glass or plastic cloches.
If there’s sun, the frames or cloches need only be in place a few days to warm up the soil enough for sowing or planting. Then keep them on until the temperatures really warm up in late spring.
Cabbage, cauliflower, lettuce, runner beans and silver beet will all benefit from this mollycoddling.
Dig in green manure crops so they will be well-rotted down when the time comes for spring sowing and planting.
For new strawberry beds, dig in plenty of compost before planting. Add blood and bone at planting and water in well. Existing plants will also benefit from a good mulch of compost spread around them and a sprinkling of blood and bone.
Chit seed potatoes, which will be ready for planting when the sprouts are about 1cm long.
To chit, put in single layers on newspaper or a warm dry place out of direct sunlight. Chitting breaks winter dormancy so that when the potatoes are planted in the cold spring soil, rather that sulking and rotting, they will start to grow straight away.
Ornamentals
Perennials – such as aquilegia, delphiniums, hollyhock, penstemons and russell lupins – may be sown in trays and under glass or on a sunny window sill, sheltered verandah or porch.
Autumn-flowering perennials may be divided now.
Dig up, discard central pieces of root and replant the vigorous outer ones.
Repot pot plants that might be getting rootbound – that is, too big for the pots, and identifiable by the roots going round and round the inside of the pots, or jamming themselves into the pots below the soil surface. Give any potted plants that are looking a little lacklustre a top-up of proprietal potting mix. This should be done now before plants leave dormancy and new spring growth begins.
Prune and feed camellias once they have finished flowering.
Lawns
Turf may be laid if soil is not too wet.
Leave newly laid turf undisturbed for several weeks to allow the roots to establish.
Lift thatch in established lawns by raking.
As well, a prod with a fork at regular intervals throughout the lawn will aerate it and improve drainage.
Top turf
Regular raking of gravel paths will reduce weeding by taking out the bulk of the offenders while they are young and easy to remove.
– Mary Lovell-Smith