January is all about getting ready. Start quietly. Stretch your fingers and your toes before rolling over onto your side and sitting up gently.

 

I cannot suggest that you should be doing anything at all vigorous outdoors. Unless you have been doing no dig for a few years or have exquisite soil, the chances are the soil will be compacted and the structure damaged if you walk on it when it is very wet. Don’t be tempted to weed either, just so that it feels that you have a blank slate when the sowing seasons starts; what weeds you have are keeping the soil covered and protected, and they’ll only be back ten-fold when spring arrives.

 The one exception to this is, if you are biodynamically inclined, the application of the Three Kings.

 

For the birds

The darkest hour is just before the dawn and January and February are hard for birds and wildlife. Berries on the bushes are getting thin and spring is just a little too far away. If you have left many of last year’s seed heads still standing, the cold weather might drive birds from the wider landscape into your garden to make the most of your flower beds.  If you are in a town, the extra warmth might bring a wider range of birds in; small birds lose heat rapidly on cold nights.

 

Feed:

If you already feed the birds regularly, make sure you provide a consistent supply. Even if you slope off to the Alps for some winter sports, the birds will have become dependent on the supply and a sudden absence will be a shock for them.

If you have a bird bath or water for wildlife, break the ice after cold nights.

 

Prune:

I will be doing my hedge trimming in January because I never got round to it before, but don’t leave it much longer; from February, early nesting birds are likely to be scoping out new homes.

For the earth

I know you might be having a little break but the soil absolutely isn’t. The life beneath your feet is as alive and as busy as ever. Now is the time for top dressing and composting if you didn’t in the autumn (although not if the ground is frozen; putting a blanket on top of frost simply keeps the cold in longer). If you don’t have a ready supply of compost, fallen leaves will do just as well. You don’t have to rot them down, shred them or mow them, the worms will do all that with none of the effort.

 

I am not just looking for excuses to not do things in this chilly and rather grim month, but the list of things not to do in January is almost longer than the suggestions (always suggestions in Gather, no imperatives) to do. Do not weed. I have made this mistake too many times; I thought I was getting a jump on the season, that I would enter the growing season of March and April with fresh, tidy, neighbour-impressing bare soil. This has always been a recipe for disaster. In these years, the flowers have not grown as well, and the battle with the ‘weeds’ became relentless and ultimately exhausting. I hurt my soil and it fought back. Mostly with nettles. Living roots in the soil, whenever possible, wherever possible.

 

The pinnacle of living roots in your soil is a plant that forms stable, enduring, positive networks in your soil and is a plant you adore as much as the mycorrhizal fungi do. Long-lived perennials. Shrubs. Trees. Now is the time to order bare root plants. An investment in the future, because the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, and the second-best time is this January.

 

Biodynamic favourable days for planting fruit trees -

10 & 11th January

 

Biodynamic favourable days for planting flowering shrubs & bare root roses -

7th January

 

For the flowers

Sort out the seed tin & make a list:

God, I love this. I adore it. I tip my seed tin out on the kitchen table and feel the rustle and the bulges. There are always a few beans that have burst out of their envelopes rattling round in the bottom, and a packet of a very exclusive something that too precious to sow and so it never grew. (Yes, I know this makes no sense.)

 

The first run over is anything unlabelled that I really don’t know what it is. Then everything old.

 

Now it is time to make sense of what you have left over and to make a list of what you might need to order. Like with the weeding, I implore you to learn from my mistakes; I have done my seed ordering by going on a pretty website and ordering one of everything that took my fancy. This is in no small way responsible for responsible for the bursting quality that my seed tins take on. It is a waste and unhelpful. Make a list and stick to it, and then add just a couple of things on impulse. Because what is life without adventure?

 

So how do you make the list? Some questions for you.

 

Have you got foliage as well as flowers? Have you got early and lates? Some cools and some warms? Unless, like me, you only grow one or the other.

 

My list making is also determined by desire to support my soil. This means choosing perennials over annuals, choosing open pollinated over bought in, and making it my life’s work to never have to buy seed again. I slightly fear what addiction may replace it though.

 

So if you are buying seed from me, add a few extra so that you can intentionally cultivate some plants for saving seed. Like all good psychotherapists, I see the ultimate marker of success to put myself out of business. If I can give you a few packets and you can have flowers and food forever, I shall declare this a life well lived.

 

Sowing:

Too soon? For some flowers with a long growing season needed, maybe not. For the first time, I am getting my Cobaea in in January. My kitchen windowsill will be slowly being filled up with pots and trays because germinating seeds will need the heat and protection of a human-inhabited home or a heated greenhouse. (I am not turning my heat mat on yet, so they can all share my cooker.) Oh, and sweet peas can be sown pretty much all year round. Whenever I need a fix. If you have any aquilegia, now is perfect for that too. I have written a whole book on sowing, growing & loving aquilegia so no more on this here, but if you want to read my love letter to this most elegant of plants, you can get your copy here.

 

There are other sorts of seeds too, ones that don’t want unnatural heat but they do need the cold. Sowing in pots and trays and leaving them outdoors, exposed to the elements gives them the cold to warm change they need to germinate. Perennials such as delphiniums need this especially. I have been known to fake it with a fridge but the people you share your fridge with might appreciate you letting Nature do its thing.

 Pruning roses:

If you have roses, and you haven’t pruned them already, now is the time. This recent cold weather has done me a favour. My roses often have a flower or two on them all the way through the winter and, although my secateurs itch, I can’t bring myself to cut them right back. However, two hard frosts and they are in tatters. I am going in. If you have a waxed jacket, put it on. I always start in a thick, winter woolly jumper and spend the first twenty minutes cursing and unhooking myself. I remember a trial at Wisley where they compared a bed of roses pruned carefully and intricately by a highly skilled horticulturalist, and one that they ran a hedge-trimmer over. They fared pretty much the same. However, where’s the satisfaction in that?

 

A decent video here about how to put a bit of thought and effort in and make out you’re an expert.

 

Biodynamic favourable days for pruning roses - 24th January

One last thing:

Cut back the foliage on your hellebores. I nearly forgot, but one look at their tatty leaves reminded me to tell you.