The beginning of a new year not only brings some cold and frosty weather, but also thoughts about what we can do to make our gardens even better for the coming year. For the best results later in the year, plan ahead and tackle a host of garden maintenance tasks now. It not only gets the jobs done now, but also frees up your time to do other tasks around the garden during the busier months ahead. Here are some tasks we are doing in our gardens this January:
- Mulch: Spread organic matter and mulch around plants and borders. It's one of the single best things you can do to improve a garden as it provides a long list of benefits, including improving the soil and reducing weeds in the year ahead. We put down a special formulation of manure and spent mushroom compost It's a smelly and messy affair, but it's a small price to pay for ensuring our gardens look their best!
- Digging and Turning soil: Frost helps break down London's clay soil so we dig through empty areas in flower beds and leave for frost to work its magic. Winter Cultivation (otherwise known as digging or turning the soil over) improves soil structure by alleviating compaction and allows the frost to break up the soil over the winter, improving the structure for next growing season.
- Turn off garden taps and winterise irrigation systems. It's also a good time to fix any holes or problems in irrigation pipes.
- Install and repair fences, trellis and support wires: The lack of leaves makes it the best time of year to check fences, trellis and wiring to make sure it is secure and supporting plants and climbers properly.
- Make sure to keep plants in containers insulated from frost and clear of fallen leaves (which can encourage disease). You can wrap pots with bubble wrap or a strip of old carpet, hessian-side out.
- Winter-prune Wisteria
- Cut dead, damaged and diseased foliage and branches from trees and climbers and prune to shape.
- Check roses, trees and newly planted shrubs to make sure they haven’t been blown by winds or lifted by frost.
- Prune vigorous climbers like Ivy.
- Prune overgrown hedges: With plants being dormant, now is a good time to reduce overgrown hedges to a more manageable size.
- It’s a good idea to continue mowing lawns every few weeks in the winter, but at a high setting and on a dry day. This not only keeps it tidy, but is also an effective way of removing leaves from the top of the grass.
- Repair and patch lawns, when the weather allows
- Move plants: with plants going dormant, now is the time of year to move herbaceous perennials, deciduous shrubs, climbers and trees.
- Clean Garden Furniture: Now is a good time to jet spray moss and algae off of wooden furniture and apply coating of oil/preservative to improve looks and extend life of furniture.
- (Couch) Potato Gardening: Sometimes the weather is just too bad to do anything outside, even for us, and so we retreat home to plan what we need to do in our clients’ gardens in the months to come.
If you don’t want to tackle these tasks in your own garden, please contact us. We’d be happy to help you make your garden the best it can be!