Back from our holidays and with the Christmas decorations now safely packed away, I would like to wish all my readers a very happy New Year and welcome you back to another year of Peonies & Posies. My first post was on 17th January 2013, so I am rapidly approaching the start of my third year of writing about my garden and growing and arranging cut flowers.
Whilst away on my holiday in the French Alps, I found some time to sit down and concentrate on my blogging plans for this year. I will certainly be continuing with making a vase of flowers from my garden every Monday – it is a great way to focus on what is looking at its best through the seasons. I recently watched the Alan Titchmarsh programme about the gardens at Buckingham Palace and was heartened to learn that the gardeners there pick a posy from the garden for the Queen’s desk every Monday! There is no better way to enjoy your garden than in a small vase placed somewhere where you sit or work every day, so I would encourage all my readers to get picking and to link up with the lovely host of this meme, Cathy at Rambling In The Garden.
This month I will also be starting a monthly look at what is going on in my greenhouse and Cutting Garden. I will be focusing on the greenhouse on the 2nd Wednesday of every month and the Cutting Garden on the last Wednesday of the month. If you would like to join in, please link up via the comments on the relevant post – I would love to see what you are planning and growing.
I am also returning to a post I ran weekly last year about Jobs To Do In The Garden. This year I am going to make this a monthly post and I hope it will help us all with keeping up with our sowing and growing throughout the year.
On a more general note I am hoping to refresh the appearance of Peonies & Posies and have the site working in a more organised way. I work on a Mac with a relatively quick internet speed, so I have no problems with the site loading – I would love to hear about how it performs in other situations – does anyone have any difficulties with loading or navigating around?
Moving on to my Jobs To Do In January, January is a relatively quiet month in my garden. The short days and tendency for large areas of the garden to become waterlogged means that I tend to restrict my gardening activities to planning border improvements in my garden notebook, sorting through my seeds, ordering new supplies and organising my greenhouse. I have already ordered my dahlia tubers from Rose Cottage Plants and put in a seed and bulb order with Sarah Raven.
There are a few ‘proper’ jobs though that I like to get done before the end of the month:
- I will sow the first batch of sweet peas that will grow in the Cutting Garden this year. For the first time I already have a batch of sweet peas growing in the greenhouse that are a winter variety. These will be planted under cover into the greenhouse bed later this month and will hopefully provide sweet peas in April and May. The batch that I sow this month should be in flower outside in June. I will be back with a focus post on growing sweet peas later this week.
- I have a few pots of Lily of the Valley pips in my cold frame. I will be bringing these inside next week to grow in the warmth of my kitchen. Last year I had beautiful Lily of The Valley flowers in February using this method.
- Last winter I bought a beautiful terracotta rhubarb forcer from Crocus. I will be placing this over one of my rhubarb crowns and filling it with straw, so that I can look forward to some long thin very pink stems of rhubarb to make into a compote to add to my morning porridge or yogurt in March.
- Weather permitting I will winter prune my fruit bushes and apple trees this month. I am also going to make this the year that I erect a fruit cage over my blackcurrants, redcurrants, gooseberries and strawberries – I have a huge problem with birds in my garden, so I will be researching fruit cages this month.
- The only vegetable seeds that I plan to sow this month will be a batch of broad beans. I did plant a few rows directly into the soil in October – there is no sign of them now, so they must have been eaten by mice. I always find I have more success with sturdy young plants started in the greenhouse in January and February.
- I will be ordering garlic, shallots and potatoes this month. The garlic can be planted straight out – the sooner the better as it needs a cold spell to perform well. The onions will be planted in February or March and I will set the potatoes to chit immediately, ready for planting out at the end of March.
- If there are any fine days when the soil is dry enough to work on, I will spend a few hours cutting back and tidying in the borders – the more preparation I can do before the growing season starts the easier it will be to keep control of the borders throughout the summer.
So there you have it – my list of jobs that I need to complete this month to ensure the gardening year gets off to a good start. Another year to enjoy all my favourite blooms – I can feel my excitement growing as I start to focus on my plans!!
I will be back later this week with my Focus On Growing Sweet Peas. In the meantime I would love to hear about your January garden plans and also any comments you have that would help me with my review of the site.
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Hi Julie, I can feel your excitement growing as well from reading about your plans. Looking forward to checking your lists for inspiration. I use a MacBook Pro with decent internet speed and have not experienced any problem with load times on your site.
Thank you Susie and happy New Year – I am pleased to hear that you have no problems with my site!
I love your site so have no ideas there. As far as chores, we are stuck indoors with the garden covered in snow and below zero temps. So forcing indoor bulbs for vases is all I can do right now. Sometime in February I will start flower seeds and March veg garden seeds. My flowers and veggies can’t be started outdoors before April as the ground will stay frozen until then…..looking forward to all your post ideas.
Thank you Donna and happy New Year – I have heard that the weather is very bad where you are this year – I hope the cold conditions do not last too long. If I am lucky seeds sown outside in March will germinate, but I always have back ups in the greenhouse as the weather is still very unreliable at that time. Thank you for your positive comment about my site!
Hi Julie, Happy New Year to you too, thank you for your post, that was a timely reminder to bring some Lily of the Valley indoors – a job that had slipped off my radar. I work on a mac book pro but with an internet speed of less than 1 at home and I can always see your beautiful light filled photographs.
Thank you Julie – I hope you will post about your Lily Of The Valley – it will be interesting to see how they get on. I am so glad that my site is loading well with a low internet speed – I started to worry after reading about problems on other sites over Christmas.
I always have problems viewing photographs on Blogspot or Blogger, but not on WordPress. Its very frustrating and that is down to slow internet speed and a the fast processor in my laptop. If I use an iPad I can view photos, but cannot comment, so have to have both my laptop and iPad or iPhone running at the same time. As you can imagine this drives me potty. Thankfully, I can always see and read your blog though!
Nice to see you back Julie, I live in an area with very poor internet but I don’t have problems with your image size. I watched a Sara Raven video on You Tube and she strongly advised sowing sweet peas by the end of December if possible, she says the difference in plant size was notable compared to those sown in January. As you hadn’t spoken again about the greenhouse post I decided to do mine during the first week of the month, it isn’t a meme but for my information as much as anything else. Happy New Year.
Happy New Year Christina! I know that Sarah Raven is a great advocate of early sowing but I like to keep my greenhouse as empty as possible until after the Christmas festivities. Perhaps you could link your greenhouse post to my site anyway – I am hoping to build up a monthly information point about greenhouse growing, so it does not matter when posts are published. I am relived to hear that you have no problems with loading my site – I was reading something that raised my concerns and realised that I had never considered whether others could read my posts as easily as I can.
Happy New Year Julie! I view your blog on both a mormal PC and an iPad and never have problems loading your page or leaving comments. I think you sound very organized and I hope this will rub off on me… I still have a month or so to daydream though, as our climate is somewhat colder than yours! 🙂
Happy New Year to you too Cathy – I am pleased to hear that you can read my site well on both a PC and an iPad. We were very lucky with the weather last year and this year seems to be going the same way – although my garden is waterlogged the grass is still growing and lots of bulbs are poking through.
Hi Julie – I will be interested in reading what you have been doing in your greenhouse each month too and will try and work in a monthly post as I find the comments and the banter very helpful. My small greenhouse is pretty full of autumn sown seedlings and young plants and pots of Paperwhites so I need to have some sort of a plan for when I start sowing again as there is no room for them there at the moment! No problems with your blog or leaving comments on it, and it is easy to find things if I am looking for anything other than the most recent post.
Happy New Year Cathy! Thank you for considering a monthly greenhouse post – like you I find the conversations and shared experiences one of the best rewards for blogging and am looking forward to learning more about everyone uses their greenhouses. I have been having a sort out today as I need to make some room for seed sowing. I have moved my autumn sown hardy annuals into the cold frame and will keep my fingers crossed that the weather does not deteriorate too much. The potted bulbs that were cluttering the floor have now moved up to the staging, but they will go outside when I need the space for germinated seeds in February.
And I shall move the largest hardy annuals to the bigger greenhouse, and possibly bulbs too
A happy New Year to you too Julie! I do not have any problems reading your blog or posting comments. I usually visit using an iMac but occasionally on an iPad. I hope that your blog plans for the year pan out well. I may join in the greenhouse one as and when although I’m going to have to curtail seed sowing this year. I’m looking forward to reading your post on sweet peas but am slightly puzzled by your sentence in this post “For the first time I already have a batch of sweet peas growing in the greenhouse that are a winter variety”.
Thank you Anna -and I do hope you manage to join in with a greenhouse post! I can see that you have worked out my reference to winter sweet peas – this is an experiment so I will keep you posted. At the moment the seedlings look quite small so I am keeping my fingers crossed that they will put on some growth in February and March once they are planted in the greenhouse bed.
Ah now that I’ve read your sweet peas post Julie I understand the reference to a winter variety of sweet peas. I remain to be convinced though 🙂
Hey – I see I’m a bit late to this party, but we’re starting our garden for sure this spring, so thanks for the instruction.
Gary