Gardening tips – a new year for the growing season
It’s almost the start of a new year and the start of the gardening season.
Time to plan your planting and how you want your garden to look over the coming months, stock up on seeds and service any essential equipment such as lawn mowers and tools.
It’s also a time for New Year’s resolutions, so here are a dozen - one a month - that will make your garden super diverse and environmentally friendly:
▍ Use less plastic
▍ Plant a tree
▍ Start sowing seeds
▍ Plant something for fun
▍ Grow more veg
▍ Go green and have a go at organic growing
▍ Learn to relax and enjoy your garden
▍ Be more water-aware
▍ Compost more of your garden waste
▍ Welcome wildlife
▍ Bring the outside in with houseplants
▍ Look after your tools
First on the list is using less plastic, something we are all trying to do in our daily lives.
The biggest ‘bad boy’ in any gardener’s life is the plastic pot.
It’s estimated that 500 million plant pots and seed trays are sold every year and the majority are sent to landfill or are incinerated.
But there are non-plastic alternatives such as biodegradable pots made using materials like coir, wood chips, bamboo and rice husks.
You can also make your own pots using newspaper or toilet roll tubes. And now is a good time to make your own supplies of biodegradable pots so you have stock for the planting season in a couple of months.
If you’ve got a supply of old newspapers to hand simply roll a 15cm-wide strip of newspaper tightly around a glass tumbler, leaving 5cm beyond the bottom of the glass.
Fold the excess paper across the bottom, then press the glass down to flatten the pot’s base.
There is no need to fix your paper pot with tape, just slide it off the glass. When ready to plant, just fill with compost.
Taking good care of existing plastic is a good way to ensure you don’t have to keep buying it – so reuse any plant pots you have again and again for new seedlings, cuttings and plants.
If you look after your propagator trays and lids, repairing them if they crack, they will last for several seasons.
The added bonus of recycling or reusing items in the garden is that it also reduces cost - as does growing from seed rather than buying established plants.
Even in winter you can grow something from seed, you just need a seed tray and a window ledge, or small cold frame or greenhouse – whatever space and budgets allow.
For anyone growing their own veg, this month is great for sowing onions.
If you sow onions now it saves the expense of buying onion sets (small bulbs) later and you can have a much larger crop of onions in the summer.
Onions seeds do not have a long shelf life, so it’s best to buy new seeds each year.
Seeds will germinate between 1621°C one or two weeks after sowing. When large enough to handle, transplant to individual small pots and keep in a bright, frost-free place until April when they can be planted out.
Varieties to try include Setton - high yield, yellow skinned and good storage potential; Red Baron - a late maturing red onion with globe-shaped bulbs and strong taste; and Hybound - an early variety with bronze-brown skins which is excellent for long-term storage.
According to the Royal Horticultural Society, January might be the middle of winter but as the days lengthen the garden starts to grow.
Now is a great time to plan for the coming gardening year and to order seeds and plants.
Also put out food for birds and leave some garden areas uncut, a little longer, to provide shelter for wildlife in your garden.
Top three jobs this month - clean pots and greenhouses ready for spring; dig over empty or unused plots; and prune apple and pear trees.