GreenFly - A 'flylady style' gardening thread with weekly tasks to tame your garden

KajiKita

Hedge pruning might be worth considering? Not affected too much by frosty weather and a good job to do when birds are not nesting 😊

KK

Cheery_Daff

We're still under several inches of snow, so no gardening here yet! Need to have a ponder and a plan though, and see what seeds I've got. I didn't grow any veg at all last year, and intended to give all my seed stash away so I could start again, but can't remember if I actually did or not 🙄

Do I bother planting wildly out of date seed? My gardening is best described as 'haphazard' and I would like a bit of a harvest this year 😂

greenbee

I need to look at my seeds. And check that my bare root tree is OK in the garage - I'm hoping the weather will improve enough this week to get it in the ground. 

I also need to work out where the heated propagator can go and be safe from dog and cat investigations. And think more about where I want to put posts and wire for climbers and how I plan to break up the space in the garden a bit more. 

kazwookie

3 fruit trees should arrive today, one is already here.

Sun is out, but I am indoors 'planning' on what goes where and looking through my wild flower seeds..........

EssexHebridean

Veg seeds were checked through and listed yesterday, and we've now started a list of the things we might want for this season too although so far all that is on there is a couple of new-to-us tomato types. I just bet the list doesn't stay that short though! Not too many duplicates to my surprise, and several of those we do have are herbs which will get sown in quantity anyway so the duplicates are actually welcome. 

We will definitely want some more beans, although I'll be keeping an eye in Lidl to see if they do the same bush bean type we grew successfully this year - they were by far the best crop we got, and as I now know they grow well planted fairly close, and don't require staking, they are even better! 

Courgettes need thinking about and we want to get some trellis panels to make it easier to grow things upwards. 

greenbee

I've checked my seeds - I need chillies (any recommendations?), cherry toms, toms, aubergine, big cucumbers, more courgettes and possibly some different squash. And to make a decision about whether to try again with the asparagus as last year's didn't make it. 

I know where the heated propogator is, but need to think about where to put it that the other residents won't investigate too closely! 

EssexHebridean

If you want flavour but relatively little heat then Hungarian Black chillis are glorious - although they are a bit of a devil to germinate. I saved seeds from last year's crop from the single plant I was successful with but I can't be absolutely certain they weren't F1 so I may be playing chilli roulette...! 

I fancy trying a squash but really want something that will climb to avoid the issues with them taking up so much space at ground level. 

redofromstart

I have only ever grown the Cayenne type ones, but this time I have 'Bishops Crown' (one of the ten packs with the current issue of Kitchen Gardens) which might be more to my taste as they suggest filling them with cream cheese. 

I still haven't found the heated propagator but lots of other useful garden bits turned up in the big tidy up outside.   There is more that can go but I am tired, its trying to rain and the skip is nearly full.

One freshly emptied green waste bin filled with rose trimmings.  Lots of bits of scrap metal and rotting wood moved to the skip.  So many slugs and slug eggs on the rotting wood.  It has made me think twice about making a bug bench with log filled gabions!  Shame, because I have found six gabions in one of his metal stashes.

kazwookie

2 cherry trees bought today, so now that is 6 fruit trees, so I offically have an orchard (according to google!!)  will plant tomorrow when I can see what I am doing. 

redofromstart

Happy new orchard Kazwookie!  

Very cold and a little bit foggy here but I am hoping the sun will break through so I head outside for a bit.  A lot of clutter has gone from the garden into the skip and now I am doing random circuits with a bucket to pick up any broken plant pots, ancient dog toys, etc that are dotted round the place.  I have also spotted a few blackberries pushing in from the neighbours and I need to go back and trim as far as I can.  It doesn't stop them, but at least they can't root if they don't touch the ground here.

I think I have found the heated propagator and want to get a few early things in and growing - mostly the chillis and aubergines.  I also have some bare root plants that need soaking before I put them in pots.  They arrived when the ground (and my compost) was frozen and I haven't had time to do anything with them the last few days.  

I am being tempted by various plants as I know I have no plans to go back to work in the immediate future (so I have time to garden for once) but I haven't really made a decision about how long I will stay in this house so no investing in big statement plants unless they go in the big pots.  Makes sense to focus on reasonably priced things that will add colour this year and next.  

Reminder for Jan activities:
Have you wiped and put your tools away?  Leaving wooden handled things out in this weather does them no good at all.
Last chance to plant any bulbs - you will get less out of them than the ones planted in autumn but better to plant them and have a chance of them growing next year than letting them rot away.
Hedge trimming
Winter pruning - wisteria, grapevine, roses, autumn fruiting raspberries, etc
Weeding - anything that needs removing to ensure that early spring bulbs look pretty?  My snowdrop drifts will be flowering soon and I need to just tidy out the flower heads from last summer s annuals so that they are not lost. Hellebores need old leaves chopping off before they start to flower.
Planting - as long as the ground isn't frozen - bare root fruit trees, pots of bulbs (in the green things like snowdrops which do not grow well from dry bulbs).  Snowdrops expand well and a small clump will expand nicely if you keep splitting them out. 
Mulching - would anywhere benefit from a layer of compost? Let the birds do the work for you over winter.